


Pot Calling Kettle

by Cluegirl



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Guilt, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pining, Sex Pollen, Short term memory loss, dubious consent due to altered state
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-17
Updated: 2013-11-14
Packaged: 2017-12-29 17:32:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 45,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1008140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cluegirl/pseuds/Cluegirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bruce Banner and Steve Rogers are really very similar when you look past the obvious.  They're both smart, temperamental, resilient, stubborn, and look -- they even both love the same man.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Power and mercy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [abysmal_seraph (absymal_seraph)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/absymal_seraph/gifts).



> Trigger warning for violent sex under dubious circumstances. If you think this might trigger you, please see the end note for specifics.

When Bruce came back to himself he was in the throes of orgasm, shock and pleasure and alarm all crashing through him in blinding pulses that caught up the post-transformation ache in his joints and cramping muscles and braided it all into sizzling, white fire. He reared and thrust, and shook, not able to stop shoving into the heat and slick and yielding grip that surrounded his pulsing cock. The sky was far and white, the air dry and very cold in his open, silent throat. The monster's roar dwindled away into a wheeze that finally, _finally_ emptied Bruce, balls, lungs, brain, and only then did the blackness he'd expected reach up for him, collapsing his jangling, buzzing bones like a compromised jenga tower, and pouring him over someone who caught him close and cushioned his fall.

A heart not his thundered under Bruce's ear, and a bruised, thick voice murmured, "Got you. You're ok. It's ok now." And in the last fading scrap of horrified consciousness he had, Bruce dragged his eyes open long enough to glimpse the face he hadn't, even for a twisted moment, expected. It wasn't Tony bloodied, muddied, naked and half crushed beneath him, it was Steve Rogers.

And that... Dear God, that wasn't any better.

~*~

"The captured device you two were dissecting in the lab contained a chemical agent," Steve told him once Bruce had finished vomiting. He knelt just close enough to hand Bruce a nylon canteen bulging with icy water, and then mercifully backed off again while he rinsed out his mouth and spat. "Some kind of sexual stimulant combined with hallucinogens and amphetamine compounds that..." Steve scowled out at the dark night outside the pine-branch shelter he'd built around them while Bruce was sleeping. "SHIELD thinks it was intended for the President's address next week. A publicity stunt. Elections coming up soon."

"Christ..." Bruce felt disgusted rage rumble in his veins as the word ground out of him, but the Hulk was still buried deep in exhaustion and shame, and could manage no more presence than that, and a final surge of bile in his throat. All that, and for what? Political games. It was almost enough to make him wish the compound's creator had been in reach when the Hulk had responded to it. Bruce couldn't remember what he'd done, but he knew the monster's strength and capacity for destruction too much to expect anything but the worst, especially given that he'd been in ... 

"Tony?" He gulped, stomach cramping with a sudden panic. "Tony too? Did I-"

"No." Steve's hand fell like an anchor onto Bruce's shoulder just long enough to steady him, then slipped away before it could burn. "The smoke affected him too, but he's fine. He's _fine_ now, Bruce. We... You didn't hurt him."

And Bruce positively loathed the wash of sick relief that went through him to hear that he hadn't raped his own lover too. Steve must have... what was that he'd said that first time on the Helicarrier? He'd made the sacrifice play, and _Tony_... Bruce took a deep breath and closed his eyes, closer to a prayer of gratitude than he'd been in his life. Tony was okay now. Steve wouldn't lie about that. Tony was okay, the drugs worn away or flushed out of his system, probably nothing worse than hungover and ... and ... Bruce fought the sloppy thickening of his throat, the rush of heat in his eyes, and shivered until Steve leaned close enough to drape a mylar emergency blanket delicately over his shoulders.

Bruce should never have been fast enough to catch Steve's wrist, but somehow he did, and Steve almost managed to hide the flinch when Bruce's fingers dug at bruises that just peeked from his undershirt's sleeve. "Sorry," he said, smile bashful and hollow. "Didn't mean to startle you there. You just looked cold. I've called our location in, but they'll still need to find a place to set down when they arrive. Might be awhile before we get you something warmer." He pulled gently on his wrist, a hint Bruce ignored. "Now you're up, I thought I'd go get some wood and build a proper fire..." 

Bruce stared at Steve in the thin, light of the emergency LED between them. He'd cleaned himself up while Bruce had slept; washed the blood and filth from his face, pulled most of his clothes back together, and he now sat on his heels regarding Bruce with the most open, earnest, gentle eyes. What damage the serum wasn't hiding, the shadows, his clothing, and his acting talent were. "How bad?" Bruce made himself ask.

Steve shook his head. "Not bad. He didn't really... Hulk was just scared, Bruce. Didn't understand what was happening, and-"

"How. Bad?" He said through his teeth.

He didn't realize he was clenching again until Steve's fingers gently but inexorably pried his open. "Bruce," he said, leveling a stare that seemed incapable of guile, "I'm not hurt. Not really. I've healed up from far worse on quick march through back woods in the Alps. Heck, I get more knocked around than this just sparring with Thor." Bruce cursed, shoved to his knees and made for the lean-to's opening, but Steve's grip on his arm caught him up short. "Bruce."

"If it's nothing, then let me _see_!" Bruce shoved the words past knotted throat and locked jaw, belly wrung tight, eyes burning. Because he might not have Steve's life memorized the way some people did, but he'd heard of the skinny kid who bled over every Brooklyn back street and alleyway and still wouldn't stay down. He knew what kind of pain you could hide inside from a punch or a grip or a kick -- marks that wouldn't show for weeks, and once they did, you were so used to the ache that you forgot it was even there. The monster might have made Bruce immune to that kind of damage these days, but he remembered what it was like to know pain so well you didn't even bother to nod or greet it by name when it came around again. "Steve, please, I need to _know._ "

With a sigh, Steve skinned the undershirt away, the clingy fabric making his damp hair spike up from behind. Then he yanked his zip down, hooked his thumbs over his waistband and with a compact, efficient wriggle, shoved his pants down his thighs. Then he reared up to fill the lean-to's low space, arms akimbo, jaw set, eyed defiant. Bruce picked up the light and the challenge, swallowing hard as he leaned close to stare.

Steve's chest and stomach were a sculpted miracle in the white glow beneath, muscle groups so perfect they should have been neatly labeled in sepia ink as they flowed, one into another. He was beautiful, perfect, and any other time the guilt gnawing at Bruce's throat would have been a lighter, tingling, teasing thing, easily ignored, or taken to his adventurous lover for a round of imaginative confession-sex. Another time, Bruce wouldn't have been searching the planes of pectoral, serratus, abdominal and oblique for signs of hidden trauma his fists and fingers had surely left behind. 

Was that a rind of yellow at his jaw the mark of incoming beard, or the last evidence of a fierce grip that had forced his head? The welted skin along his obliques where his pants had bound tight as he'd sat could easily hide the marks where fingers would naturally grab. He reached to smooth the flesh, to search for bruising, but the dark shadow he'd noticed earlier on Steve's wrist distracted him. Those livid marks were still fresh, winding halfway to the elbow and just now beginning to turn green at the edges. Bruce imagined he could see fingerprints in the mottled purple and black.

"It's just my left arm and shoulder, mostly," Steve said after a silent moment while Bruce turned his arm gently to the light. "He didn't have a really good grip for those first few jumps. Got me around the chest after that." Bruce turned his attention to Steve's chest, searching the interlaced seratta for some sign of damage to the ribs below. 

"It was fine, Bruce," Steve murmured. "He knows how to carry his team without hurting - ah!" He flinched away from Bruce's touch, but only a little bit. "Tickled," Steve assured him when Bruce sucked his teeth in alarm. Then he leaned in close again, obviously steeling himself.

"Relax," Bruce said, trying to keep his touch firm and sure as he stroked down Steve's twitching belly. "Just relax and..." He'd meant to say 'breathe into it,' but he couldn't. Not even for a joke. Not now. He swallowed, then distracted himself with a glimpse of darkened flesh along the inside of Steve's thigh. 

"Whoa!" Steve yelped as Bruce lifted his penis aside and brought the light closer. He caught Bruce's wrists and shivered away, doubled up as if he'd had his balls kicked, not simply adjusted. 

Bruce felt his stomach twist. "Steve..." 

"It's okay," he insisted at once, letting go of Bruce's arms and straightening slowly. His face was rose pink in the harsh, bright light. "I... it's not hurt, I promise. Just... kinda sensitive there, Doc," Steve grinned, fucking _grinned_ , bashful and sly at once as he dropped one hand to try and hide his prick, which had already begun to lengthen and twitch just from Bruce's one, impersonal touch. "Serum," he said, shuffling back and reaching down for his pants again. "Doesn't take much for me, you know? Rather not get het up again out here when the team's on their way to pick us up. That'd make debriefing even more uncomfortable." Steve hiked his pants and zipped them up before Bruce even thought to check them for blood.

"Steve, that's..." he stopped, the words lining up in his head at last. "They're... they know where we are?"

He nodded, shrugging into his shirt again. "Called them in when you started waking up," Steve said, smoothing his hair down with far too much ease. "I'd have done it earlier, only I wanted to be sure you were clear of the effects first." Only the careful way that Steve watched his own fingers tucking his shirt in told Bruce the unspoken truth; 'I thought you'd need some time before facing the others,' was what he really meant. 

Bruce didn't know whether to be grateful, mortified, or just throw up again, so instead he settled back down onto the carpet of pine needles and clutched his blanket closer to his shoulders. "If you had a comm, why did you let him do it?" Bruce made himself ask, staring at his own muddy feet. "Why didn't SHEILD do something to..." Bruce sighed, answering his own question. "Because what _could_ they do to stop him?"

"They were working on a counteragent," Steve said, settling at the other end of their shelter. "Tony shook it off pretty quick, but you got a much bigger dose. Nobody knew what was going to happen, so-"

"So you put yourself between Tony and the Other Guy." Bruce ground out. "Because you knew you'd heal. Because you knew you could take it."

"It wasn't just that," Steve offered. "Bruce, Hulk _trusts,_ me. He knows I won't hurt him -- and not just because I can't – because I don't want to. He needed someone who wouldn't hurt him."

"So he could hurt you instead?" Bruce wasn't crying. That wasn't a sob; that was laughter because Steve was just so naive and honorable and goddamned ridiculous that it beggared belief, and Bruce just couldn't, just could _not_ sit there and listen to any more of it. Not without howling. He wobbled upright, knocking his head on the sheltering branches before he found his way out and staggered into the darkness.

But Steve's earnest, quiet reply dragged him to a stop before he'd gone three steps. "No. So he _wouldn't_ hurt me instead."

"Steve, he–" Bruce whirled back to shout. "Damn it, I raped you!"

"No," Steve said, crawling out of the shelter with the light clenched in one fist and his face set like granite. "That's not what happened."

"Don't whitewash it!"

"I'm not!" he shouted right back, his voice ringing echoes from distant, unseen stone. "Bruce, I'm not sugar-coating anything, you have to stop listening to your self-loathing, and start listening to ME now, because you weren't here, but I WAS; conscious and cooperating the whole time."

Bruce closed his eyes and swallowed. "Cooperation is not consent," he managed, and in a sudden, furious rush, Steve closed the distance between them.

"Stop trying to make it something it wasn't!" he growled, not touching, but looming close enough to warm Bruce's naked skin. The light shone furious between them, striking threatening shadows where Bruce knew there were none. He couldn't help shivering anyway. The blanket didn't help much.

"Look, Bruce," Steve said after a quiet moment, "Terrible things happen in wartime. Inexcusable things, and rape is one of them." He took a couple steps back, and sank down to sit on the trunk of the fallen tree whose exposed roots he'd used to build their shelter. "Rape happens in war, and it doesn't matter if you never do it yourself, or you put a stop to it every chance you get. Still happens, and you still see the aftermath of it when you're a soldier. You see what it does to the ones who did it, and to the ones who survived it. You see what it means, if you've got the nerve to try and understand." He looked down at his hands, eyes fixed far and distant to a time Bruce was glad he'd never known. "And I know one absolute thing about rape," he said, looking up and catching Bruce's gaze again. "It's not about sex."

"Steve, the _definition_ -"

But he raised a hand to that, palm out, head shaking. "Sure, it _involves_ sex, just like war involves guns, but it's _about_ breaking someone down," he said, grave and solemn and so, so certain. "It's _about_ turning a person into a thing, and then hurting that thing as much as you can, so you never forget how low you took them, how you unmade them, how they couldn't stop you, how powerful it made you feel. It's about making the victim remember you taking that power from them, leaving the memory of that helplessness behind you like a scar they'll try to hide for the rest of their lives, but you'll both always know it's there." Bruce swallowed against his gorge, clutched the blanket tighter around his shoulders and made himself breathe slowly, fully, evenly. Not to stave off the Hulk, but rather the urge to scream.

" _That's_ rape, Bruce," Steve finished, not knowing, thank God, not seeing the ghosts his words had invoked. "And that is _not_ what happened with the Hulk."

"But he..." Bruce made himself sit, knees shaking, guts twisting, fingers knotted in silver tissue. "I've seen how he... video. There's always video, and he-"

Steve set his hand on Bruce's shoulder, and this time he left it there. "You didn't see this," he said as Bruce, damning himself for the weakness, leaned into the contact and shivered again. "Hulk was angry, sure," Steve went on after a moment, "but that was only because he was afraid. Confused. Didn't understand what he was feeling, what he wanted, or what to do about it."

"He _hurt_ you, Steve." 

Steve's brows drew down and knotted at the pleading note Bruce couldn't manage to scrape out of his voice. "Thor hurts me, Bruce!" he said, letting go of his shoulder with a final jostling shake. "Natasha does too! And Clint got a lucky shot in the other day in the sparring ring, and broke my nose, but you don't see them-"

"Damn it, stop-" Bruce thrust to his feet, turned on him, all teeth. Steve did not give an inch.

"No," he said, dead calm. "You stop. Stop, sit down, and listen to me, all right? The Hulk can manage that much, so will you at least give it a try?" And because he was still shaky and sore, still lost, still sick with guilty dread, and because he couldn't refuse Steve a simple courtesy when the man was only here because of him and his damnable temper, he settled back down in the warm lea of Steve's mass. Close enough to let him put an arm over Bruce's shoulders, if he chose to do so, because Bruce was also weak, and pathetic, and selfish to the core. But he managed to keep the whine locked into his throat when Steve's arm did surround him and pull him even closer.

"He was gentle, Bruce," Steve said, low and quiet in the gloom. "Once he stopped panicking, stopped trying to run away from what he was feeling. He didn't want to hurt me, he just didn't know what to do – like a child."

Bruce nodded, thinking of toddlers, tantrums, how altruism and sympathy had to be learned, and how no creature was quite so brutal, quite so cruel as a child who had not done so yet. Or an adult who never did.

Steve's hand chafed his far shoulder, restless, idle comfort, though Bruce couldn't really be sure for whom it was meant. "It wasn't anything you wouldn't have done," Steve said, "if it had been me affected by the drug, or Thor." He craned away a little to look down and catch Bruce's eye. "If one of us – any one of us had been suffering, confused and frightened, if you didn't have a better, cleaner answer, you'd have done just what I did. We both know that."

"But..." Bruce shook his head.

Steve didn't let him finish. "Just because you hate the Hulk, don't assume any of the rest of us do the same. He's my teammate just as much as you are. I don't regret helping him through. I'd have done the same for you, if ... if Tony had been away, and you'd needed it."

"But Tony _was_ there," Bruce said, and not even he knew why he was being so pig headed about it, but that didn't mean he could make himself stop.

Steve seemed to understand, going by the long-suffering patience of his sigh. "Yes, Tony was there," he admitted and there, hidden beneath the mature, reasonable tone was the quaver Bruce kept glimpsing, the hairline crack in the Captain's otherwise perfect shield. "But he was in no shape to consent to something like that -- not with Hulk compromised as well."

Steve shifted a bit, dug out a squashed, half-melted power bar from his utility belt, and pressed it into Bruce's shaking hands. "I don't regret that either, intervening between you. Tony will understand. The only thing I regret is..." He sighed, and leaned in just a little more, as if taking comfort from the act of giving it. "I regret that it was necessary at all," he said as a distant engine hum cut through the still night. "Because neither one of you deserved to be put through any of that."

"We don't, all the time, get what we want," Bruce sighed, taking a bite and chewing, "what we deserve."

"That we don't," Steve agreed, clicking the LED to a brighter setting and flashing it up through the trees overhead. 

The Quinjet's approaching roar drowned anything else there might have been to say.

~*~

"This concludes the report of Captain Steven Rogers, as witnessed by Agent Maria Hill, 20:00 hours, October 1, 2013." Then she leaned across the table and clicked the recorder off, and Steve felt the muscles of his back begin to unwind. No matter how many times he did it, the post mission debrief was always the biggest test of his patience, his endurance, and often, his posture. Given the extent of the cameras, trackers, and microphones built into the Avengers' gear, SHIELD usually managed to keep things succinct, but this had not, by any measure, been a normal operation. 

Steve only hoped that Bruce's debriefing had been less... invasive than his own had been. There was only so much a fella could blush before he started to get light headed, after all. "So I'm cleared for duty?" he asked as she began gathering up her gear.

Agent Hill gave him a distracted glance, then prodded her tablet a couple of times. "There's nothing in your report to prevent it," she allowed. "But Dr. Banner seems to have requested that you get a full medical exam first." She managed not to smirk, and Steve managed not to groan – he awarded them both full marks for the effort.

"I'll schedule it tomorrow," he promised. Tomorrow, _after_ he'd slept himself out in an actual bed that didn't have sticks, rocks, biting insects, and pine cones in it; _after_ he'd eaten something more than the sticky, sugary energy rations he had in his equipment belt; _after_ he'd reassured Tony that Steve had, as he'd promised, brought his lover back whole, sound, and unharmed -- physically, at least. And maybe also after Steve had taken a few hours alone too, so he could let everything fall apart, pull it all back together again, and stuff it back under his game face where it belonged.

He pushed back his chair and stood, ready and more than ready to make good his escape, but the Agent's glance had a furtive, worried edge to it, and the press of her lips hinted at questions she knew she probably shouldn't ask. She hovered, just a little too close to the door for Steve to courteously get by her, and after a long and awkward moment, Steve gave in with a sigh, "What is it, Agent Hill?"

Her dark eyes flicked toward the camera in the corner. "Off the record..." Steve glanced at the camera in the corner of the room, then at the mirrored observation window, and Hill had the grace to blush. But then she poked at her tablet a couple more times, and when her chin came up again it was all defiance. " _Off_ the record, is this going to be a problem in the field, Captain?"

Steve held her eye, merciless. "How so?" he asked.

She steeled herself visibly. "I mean will you be able to work with the Hulk after ...this? Will he take your orders now he's..." she huffed silent, and Steve could see her fighting with herself to choose the right words. "Standard SHIELD protocol calls for separation of the parties involved when something like this happens. One or the other, or both of you being reassigned, relocated even, given the... um... violence in question, but..."

"But there is only one Avengers team," Steve took pity on her and finished the thought, "and I am its Captain. I trust them – all of them -- and the team knows that when it counts. Don't worry about the Hulk. He'll do just fine next time he's needed."

"And what about Dr. Banner?" She asked, surprising him. "Will he run this time too?" 

Steve frowned, but couldn't dismiss the implication. The doctor's horror of hurting those he cared about was well documented, as was his flight response to extremes of emotion. But Steve had to shake his head all the same. "He didn't have the Avengers after Culver or Harlem," he told the agent, knowing even as he said it that it was true. "He didn't have Tony. Tony won't let Bruce disappear now they're together. Not given that there's no need for it."

Hill gave him a skeptical stare. "From what I saw on the Quinjet, Stark looked like the one most likely to _drive_ Banner into running."

And it was true, Tony had been overdoing it, compensating for Bruce's silent withdrawal with chatter and flash, clinging and draping himself over Bruce's shoulders in an effort to prove that he was fine, and he wasn't mad at whatever might have happened, and he was just glad to have them both back all right. Tony had verbally redesigned and re-outfitted the entire lab and workshop area by the time the Quinjet brought them in to land on the Helicarrier, and if he actually followed through on half of it, Steve thought Pepper would probably give him a punch in the nose for overspending. 

Steve still shook his head though. "It's not... You have to understand what Tony _means_ to him," he tried. "He's more, so much more than just money and flash and attitude."

"I'm beginning to notice more people making that claim," Hill put in drily. 

Steve ignored the sarcasm. "Yes, but think of how long Bruce lived a life where people with money, people who drew attention to themselves, who were loud and unashamed, meant nothing but danger to him. Think of how hard it's been for him after all that time to re-learn the same world you take for granted – the cameras everywhere, the way people stare at their phones all day and hardly meet your eye, the way they spend money like it doesn't matter, the way they can be cruel without even realizing it, the way everything's loud, and meaningless all at once..."

"Stark can be loud and meaningless all at once."

"And that's the point," Steve nodded. "He _can_ be, and to people who aren't his... _his_ , he often is all that. But he can also be thoughtful, and considerate and generous and gentle, and so, so very protective. He'll fight to the ground for you if you're his, he'll take any hit to shield you, and he'll pay any price to fetch the slightest, silliest thing he thinks you might want." Steve had to chuckle, remembering the fight he and Tony'd had over a vintage set of Dodgers cards Steve had spotted in an online auction, and then found framed over his sofa the next week.

"He covers it up and hides it under the playboy facade mostly," he went on, "but watch Tony Stark for long enough, or get close to him, and you'll see it. You'll see what Bruce needs in him, the reason he won't ever leave, or if he does, he'll come back before long."

Hill's eyes were sober now, openly curious as she asked, "And what is that, Captain?"

"Hope," Steve said, and stepped past her to reach for the door. "Hope that he might fit into the world, that there might be a real place for him, something he can do, something he can keep. Some way his life can _mean_ something against all the noise and nonsense. Hope that he can actually belong somewhere that's real." Steve smiled, remembering the baffled, fond look on Bruce's face when Tony would inevitably fall asleep on him during movie night, sprawled graceless and familiar across a man who had to have gone years without a meaningful touch. The team would generally sneak off and leave them alone when that happened, but Steve always found himself turning back to steal a last long glance at them. "And that makes Tony Stark the definition of Home," he finished, knowing he hadn't explained it adequately, but not really willing to reveal more.

This time, Agent Hill didn't stop Steve when he left.


	2. Stoicism and honor

"So you're okay, right?"

Steve gave Clint a sidelong, weary glare, but then he shrugged. "Sure."

Which was as good as a categoric denial, really. "SHIELD got you in with a trauma counselor?" he prodded after filling up a few more seconds with silence and pretzels.

The glare broke into a halfassed smile that retained its edge of warning. "SHIELD tried. I told 'em where to go."

"Yeah?" Clint snickered.

"Yeah." Steve watched the TV screen for another long minute, then he gave up a sigh. "And yeah, I'm fine. You don't need to hang around looking out for me."

"Hey, I'm just on Eastern Bloc time," Clint replied. "You, however, apparently don't need the excuse of having an impending op in Albania coming up this Thursday to explain why you're awake at 3:45, watching infomercials in the team lounge for the third night in a row."

Steve cracked a genuine smile at last. "I'm _fine_ , Clint. And it was a movie before. _Streetcar Named Desire_. Didn't feel like watching in my room, was all. Sound is better out here." Which certainly explained why there'd been no sound coming from the lounge for the past hour. Clint nodded and let the bullshit stand. On the muted screen, a model whose delicate hands had never seen a single day's hard work made a deliberate mess out of chopping celery. It was kinda hilarious, actually, watching someone work that hard to fuck up something so very basic.

"So. Orphanage, huh?" Clint said after a long silence. 

Steve didn't react. At all. 

"Just seems like you know your way around this shit, is all. Nat was thinking wartime, but I said nah -- you were all big by then. I mean, not that it can't happen to big guys or anything, but-"

"But it didn't to me." Steve's eyes never strayed from the screen, but their focus was decades away.

Clint nodded and ate a pretzel. "Right. So I figured it hadta be before, when you'd been small. And I remembered that you'd grown up-"

"That when it happened to you?" Steve challenged suddenly, jaw hard as granite, eyes bright as carnival glass. "At the orphanage?"

"Foster care," Clint corrected with a careless shrug. "But yeah. More to my brother than me, but yeah. That's why we ran."

Those bright eyes closed suddenly, either shutting out the ghosts, or sealing them in. "Yeah," Steve said. "Long time ago." He took a deep breath, held it for a moment, and then blew it out again. "Water under the bridge. Things are different now."

"Yup."

"And I don't need no damn doctor dredging it all up again."

"Nope."

"Especially when the first damn question outta her mouth was about drugs."

"Damn straight."

Steve peered at Clint with obvious suspicion, which Clint answered with a grin, and a pretzel flicked at his Captain's face. Of course he caught it before it hit him -- that was half the fun. "Look, Steve SHIELD knows all about what happened to me. Not 'cause I got all touchy feely with the docs in the psych department, but because when I damn near blew three different ops that hit me a little too close to home, Phil Coulson fucking handcuffed me to a chair and made me watch _Intervention_ until I told him all about it." 

He shrugged and flipped Steve another pretzel, by way of a hint that he should maybe eat the one he already had. "So now they know better than to send me into certain locations, and to pull me out when certain things start to go south."

"Sure," Steve nodded, chewing. "Asset management."

"So there isn't anything about this -- what happened last week, or what happened when you were a kid -- that changes who you are, what you're made of, or what you're gonna do when the chips are down, right?"

Steve's mouth quirked. "Damn straight."

"Damn straight," Clint agreed, "And if you wanna watch TV in the team lounge instead of sleeping or beating things up in the gym for awhile, then I'm down with hanging out, too. It's what I'd want," he explained to Steve's suspicious glance. "I mean hell, it's not like solitude helps the nightmares, or shuts up the stupid voices in your head or anything. Bad enough we both had to be alone when it happened the first time, right?"

Steve sighed again, but this time there was something else in the sound -- something unwinding, weary, but a little bit grateful. "Guess that's true," he allowed, and stole some pretzels.

Clint grinned, triumphant, and stole the remote. "Great. So here..." He fended off Steve's halfassed grab for the remote by thrusting the snack bowl at him as he surfed down through the channels fast as he could. "Nope, nope. Solidarity's one thing, but we are NOT watching shit that will drain our collective IQ down to room-temperature numbers! And no more Tennessee Williams movies either. American classic literature or not, you have to admit most of his characters are assholes."

"Laura from _The Glass Menagerie_ wasn't that bad," Steve tried, suppressing a grin.

"Exception that proves the rule," he declared as the Travel Channel came up. "Here: Give this a try. Not that Bourdain's any less of a douche, but I don't think he's an _actual_ rapist, and at least he can cook."

"Oh, and that makes _all_ the difference," Steve smirked. But he didn't try and get the remote back.

"Shut up and watch the nice man enjoy his... um..." he squinted at the screen. "Is that actually a warthog's rectum?"

"Looks like," Steve answered, settling into the sofa and crunching his pretzels louder than was strictly necessary. "I hear those are good eating."

~*~

It took Bruce half an hour to make himself come out of the bathroom. By that time, Tony had stripped the sheets off the bed, and either shoved them down the laundry chute, or for all Bruce knew, into the micro-incinerator they'd moved up to the kitchen while the labs were being rebuilt. Either way, both Bruce's lover, and the lingering evidence of Bruce's first wet dream since the incident were gone from the room.

He sat down on the bare mattress and cradled his head in his hands, not sure if he was grateful, or ashamed. Tony's face as he'd woken, gasping and sticky after a week of fending off and ignoring every carnal, casual, flirtatious invitation... that _look_ he'd worn as he'd tried to assure Bruce that it was normal, natural, and healthy -- just his body cleaning out the pipes...that look of hurt, hope, and tragic, helpless woe. That look that said 'I wish I knew what to do here', but which actually _meant_ something more like; 'You, Dr. Banner, are fucking this up spectacularly." 

Betty had worn that look last time Bruce had seen her.

"Jarvis, where's Tony right now?" Bruce asked, sitting upright with a sigh.

"Sir is in the kitchen," Jarvis replied. "Cooking."

Bruce frowned. "Cooking? In the same kitchen where we moved all that lab equipment?"

"So it would appear. I don't suppose you'd mind intervening before something goes terribly awry? I could, of course, set off the fire alarms, but after the last three times I rather suspect Sir would not find it a credible threat."

"Right," Bruce said, standing. "I'm on it."

He found Tony half naked at the stove, struggling to open the 'easy-peel' package of bacon with a spatula in one hand while egg wash bubbled around what looked like a brick of frozen spinach in the pan just inches from his belly. 

"Rules, Tony," he said, leaning in close and plucking the package out of Tony's fingers when he flinched. "I know you're frustrated, but flaunting safety procedures is what got us into this mess in the first place."

"Excuse you?" Tony griped trying to swat Bruce's knuckles as he slid the hot pan out of reach. "Since when are comfort-omelets against the rules, Dr. Surly?" Bruce slapped his nude belly with one open hand, and brandished the bacon package with the other. He felt Tony's appalled flinch when the penny finally dropped.

"Shit," he murmured, leaning into Bruce. "Shit, Bruce, I almost broke the naked-bacon rule. Aw, man that woulda _sucked_!"

"Mmm hmm," Bruce agreed, taking hold of Tony's hips to walk them both back from the stove. Tony, veteran of countless ballroom lessons, followed along elegantly, even keeping up with Bruce's backwards foxtrot turn that swept them both around against the prep island. "Would have made my taking your pants down right here in the kitchen into a whole different sort of thing too."

"Oooh, yeah," Tony shivered again as Bruce suited action to words and shoved Tony's sleep pants down past his ass and wakening cock. "I like this thing soooo much better." 

"Better than grease burns?" Bruce laughed, dropping to his knees as he urged Tony around. "God, I hope so." He leaned in, pressed his nose to the crease of Tony's thigh and just breathed for a second, drawing that electric, half-mad, all-sex smell in deep, reminding himself that he _did_ have this, and he _could_ have this, and whatever might happen tomorrow, it would not take _this_ away from him. 

"Oh Jesus, Bruce, better than anything," Tony wheezed as Bruce swallowed him down, his cock hardening those last few degrees on the length of Bruce's tongue to press a challenge at his throat until he rocked back again. "Oh fuck, you're unbelievable, but you don't... Bruce, you don't have to. Just because-"

"Is there butter on the counter?" Bruce pulled off long enough to ask.

Tony blinked, flushed, rumpled and gorgeous. "Butter? Um...I don't-"

"Butter. There was some on that corner there before we put the mass spectrometer and the incubators there." Bruce stroked Tony's cock in a tight fist while he craned back and rummaged, finally coming up with the dish in his hand, and a dawning glitter of wicked realization in his eye. 

"Thanks," Bruce said, knocking the lid aside and scooping three deep fingerprints into the greasy yellow block. "Now the way I see it, if you've got enough brain cells functioning that you can question my motives while your _cock_ ," he gave it a lick, just in case it was feeling neglected, "is in my _mouth_ ," he nudged Tony's knee up over his shoulder with a shove that rattled the island and everything on it, then stroked his greasy fingers deep into the cleft behind Tony's balls, "then I really need to up my game."

Tony wailed as Bruce sucked down along his prick at just the same rate as he pressed a finger into his ass. "Oh, this is where I shut the fuck up and don't say something stupid to make you stop doing oh fuck, Bruce, that thing with your tongue and Jesus right there, right fucking _there_!" he arched back over the island, toes scrabbling at Bruce's shoulder. "Oh fuck, this is me shutting up, and being so, so quiet!"

"Nah," Bruce said, pulling back with a grin. "I worry when you're too quiet. In fact..." he slipped his finger out only long enough to work a second in with it. "I think I'd like to make you scream now, if that's okay." He didn't wait for an actual reply, but really, it wasn't as if either one expected Tony to say no to that.

To Bruce's satisfaction, he didn't technically _say_ anything at all after that for several minutes. Which was good -- better than good, for all the right reasons, and for the ones he wouldn't ever say out loud, too. It was good to etch the taste of Tony, the weight and heft of his prick, the clasp and draw of his body into Bruce's memory again, to engrave it deep and strong, and to drive out the guilty, fascinating, halfway there, almost ghosts of things he might have done, must have done to Steve. 

He couldn't remember any of that, beyond the single, shattering flash of that wakening, but Bruce was a genius; his brain had spun dreams, nightmares, and miracles out of far less evidence than that. It didn't take much to spin Steve's gentleness into a phantom of pliant surrender, his kindness into eager response, his sweetness of temper into... 

Something smashed on the tiles behind them. Bruce froze, but Tony didn't, and when his next arching thrust sent something else rattling to the tiles, Bruce relaxed and forcibly dragged his mind back into the game. Tony; his lover, writing on his fingers and beyond the words to beg for release. His best friend, who challenged him in the lab, in the bedroom, in the interview room and in the briefing room, and never failed to taunt Bruce up to his best game. His second chance, every bit as precious as the first had been, and he was here, now, real in Bruce's hands, balls shrugged up tight, ass clamped down in fluttering spasms, screaming Bruce's name as he emptied himself across the back of Bruce's tongue. 

And swallowing, Bruce was nothing, nothing at all except grateful.

The shame didn't come on till a minute or two later.

"I'm such a selfish jerk," he said, resting his forehead against Tony's heaving belly.

The sweaty, musky flesh bounced against him as Tony laughed in surprised reply. "Hello? I'm Tony Stark," he said like it was the answer to everything. "And I'm pretty sure I hold that copyright. Ow!"

Bruce took a second to rub the brand new bitemark on Tony's hip before pushing to his feet. "Ass," he chuckled, then shook his head, sobering. "I mean it though. All this week, I've just been going around wishing I could forget it ever happened, mad that I can't remember what happened, wishing things could just go back to normal, and shoving all the normal things away so I can brood. It's been me who's keeping everything all..."

"Fucked up?" Tony supplied.

"That," Bruce agreed, turning to go to the fridge. One look at the state of the floor drew him up short, his bare toes tucking up tight. "Shit. I think we broke the blender."

Tony snuggled up to his back, arms winding around his waist, beard scraping at his neck as he laughed. "Babe, we broke _everything_. Hope you didn't have anything too toxic in that incubator."

"Just a few smallpox variants, Pneumonic plague, Ebola, and something pink that I found growing on mashed potatoes down in the team fridge," Bruce deadpanned, leaning back into Tony's arms with a shiver of relief. "We should all be dead in a week, I figure. Except for Steve. He'll probably be fine."

"Sounds perfectly normal to me," Tony chuckled.

"Forgive me?"

"For killing us all?"

"For being an ass?" Bruce turned in his arms and sought a kiss he still wasn't sure he deserved.

Tony gave it without hesitation. "Sure. But next time, let me give you some pointers on how to do it right, huh?" he said, backing them toward the media lounge, and the sunken, plush living room. "Because an apology like that one deserves a HELL of a lot worse asshattery than you had racked up, Dr. Banner."

"Credit my account, instead," he grinned, and let himself be toppled into white leather and furry pillows. "Wanna stay in bed today? Watch movies, read... stuff?"

Tony climbed over Bruce's sprawl, all elbows and eagerness, with a remote in one hand and a throw blanket in the other. "Mythbusters marathon?" he asked hopefully. "We can critque their scientific processes on Twitter while we watch."

"One day, I'm going to learn just what Grant Imahara ever did to earn your undying hatred," Bruce grinned, laughing, but he tugged Tony down against him all the same, and settled himself in for some hardcore heckling as the iconically overdone credits began to roll.

Normal it wasn't, but at least it was a step the closer.


	3. Resourcefulness and Loyalty

"Captain Rogers," Fury snapped, slamming through the briefing room door like a black-leather force of nature. "Give me one reason why I shouldn't have your ass arrested right now!"

"Because I disarmed and neutralized a terrorist cell acting on American soil," Steve answered without so much as a blink. "Sir."

"Disarmed a terrorist cell," Fury spluttered, and slung his tablet down. "Do those _look_ like terrorists to you?" 

Steve caught the data tablet before it slid off the table and shattered. The newsfeed scrolling across it showed twenty handcuffed men and women in (and in some cases, almost out of) expensive business wear, doing their best to molest the annoyed SHIELD agents who were trying to marshal them all into prisoner transports. The camera angle changed, picture quality much better now, and Steve could see the prisoners up close, their faces flushed, sweaty and desperate, clothes gaping to reveal suck-marks and bites, more than one fly zip completely beyond saving, lipstick smeared so far afield it was impossible to figure out who'd started out wearing it. The marquee scrolling across the bottom of the screen was a list of names, party affiliations, and congressional roles.

He turned the tablet back to face Fury and nodded, only barely restraining the urge to smile as he answered smartly, "Yes sir, they sure do." 

Fury's eye narrowed, light gliding across a flexing tendon in his forehead as he ground his teeth. Steve was positive that the Colonel was imagining what it might be like to be able to light troublesome operatives on fire with the power of his brain alone. "Are you fucking with me, Rogers?" he grit between his teeth.

"Hell no," Steve shot back. "Intel traced key components of the captured devices and chemical agents to funding members of that organization," he tapped at the newsfeed again, now luridly focused on a grey-haired man in pinstripes who was trying to hump the leg of the agent who had him in a half nelson headlock. "Investigation of the headquarters not only bore that intel out, but uncovered several more devices on the premises, clearly intended for use on American civilians. I believe I heard the Widow say something about downloading emails, memos, and a timeline of the attack before she brought their computer system down, if you'd like to check with her."

"If I'd like to-!" Fury slammed both palms down. "Rogers, you led an unauthorized assault team on the Wisconsin Tea Party headquarters!"

"That _was_ where the terrorists were hiding out, sir," Steve explained.

"Oh, is that so? Well you wanna explain to me how the motherfucking PRESS seems to have gotten a backstage pass to your little members only party then?"

"I can't account for that, sir," Steve admitted the perfect truth with a rueful shake of his head. "Tony tells me that public figures just have to get used to the press not having any respect at all for privacy, but if you ask me it really does get out of hand sometimes."

"Rogers..."

Steve cut him off with a challenging stare. "Can I just ask, sir, are you upset because we found and captured the people who tried to attack the Presidential address, or because now the world knows exactly who those people are?"

Fury stared at him for a long moment, utterly still. Undaunted, Steve stared back, until finally the Colonel blinked once and sank down into a chair. "I am upset, _Captain_ , because one of my most valuable, reliable assets went off the reservation on a grudge mission,"

"It wasn't a-"

"Taking two more of my best assets with him without leave, without a handler, and without orders,"

"Hawkeye and Black Widow would not have-"

"AND planned the op for the one day–" he slapped the table again. "The _one day_ when not a single one of the heavy hitters on his team could possibly be available to bail his ass out in case his little vigilante act went tits up and got somebody killed!" He paused, glaring, waiting for Steve to interrupt again. Steve merely boosted one eyebrow and waved one hand for him to go on.

With a glower, Fury did. "Thor is still off world. Stark and Banner are in SHIELD Medical until morning for their stress tests and final toxicity screens, at which point I have been assured that they _will_ both be cleared for duty. That confluence of events sidelined your two best scientists, your best tech, your best point man, and your armored cavalry, and you just _had_ to pull a kamikaze raid on the bad guys _tonight?_ "

"There was nothing suicidal about it," Steve pressed the words through his teeth.

"That's all you got to say to me?" Fury growled, leaning across the table.

"That depends; is that all you care to hear?" Steve shot back. "Because I get that this," he waved a hand at the tablet, which was now showing side-by-side photos of the politicians; smiling and polished on the left side, randy and raunchy on the right. "This is awkward for you, and it's gonna upset the status quo, but it's really just about the least important factor that went into my _very careful planning_ on this operation. But you don't seem concerned about _why_ I made the choices I did. Seems like you just want to yell at me for making choices at all." Steve rolled his shoulders in a shrug that did little to release the tension built up there, then he leaned back in his chair and folded his hands neatly on the table in front of him. "Well sir, I'm a soldier. That's nothing new to me, so you go right on ahead." 

Fury stared at him for a long moment, and then his face creased into a smile that came nowhere near his eyes. "I'm starting to believe that I may no longer enjoy your full confidence, Captain."

"Oh, not at all, Sir," Steve gave back the grin that had sold a thousand war bonds. "The men and women of SHIELD are some of the bravest, most honorable people I know of in the world today. The memory of poor, brave Agent Coulson sacrificing _his life_ in the line of duty inspires me daily." Steve patted his left breast. "I keep that bloodied trading card of his right here to remind me of how _trustworthy and straight-dealing_ this agency is."

Fury stared, and Steve stared back. Fury broke first, with a bark of laughter and a heartfelt curse. "Shit, son," he said, and Steve relaxed as much as he dared. "I ain't ever playing poker with you." He chuckled again, turned to a panel on the wall and pulled a bottle of water from a small hidden fridge. This he cracked open and passed to Steve before taking out another for himself. Still wooly-throated from the gas – the only real effect it had had on him either time he'd been exposed to it, Steve drained the bottle without a second thought. But he did wait till Fury had taken a sip of his own first.

"This ain't about your op, you know" Fury said. "Oh, don't get me wrong, it's absolutely a hillbilly clusterfuck, and it's going to be a nightmare for me to clean up, but that's not what I care about."

Steve nodded. "I gathered that much."

"I took you at your word after the first gas exposure incident when you said you were all right. Out of respect for your command and field experience, not to mention the culture of your upbringing, I chose to make the post-incident trauma counseling a matter of your choice, instead of benching you pending a psych-doctor's all-clear. You'd been through the fire, I told myself, if you said you were cool, then I'd give it the benefit of the doubt. This though?" He tapped the tablet, where news anchors were trying to look grave and shocked instead of gleefully titillated while they discussed the footage and its implications. "This does not look cool. This more resembles the actions of a man on fire, who badly needs to be put out before he gets himself or people who trust him hurt."

"Not my intention, sir."

"And you'd tell me if it was?" Fury challenged.

"Ask me what you really want to know," Steve shot back, insulted.

"Why did you plan this around a partial team?"

"It was a soft target. Even with hired security on the premises there was almost no chance of them fielding any opponents in Thor's or the Hulk's league." 

"Why not order them to stand by in case you were wrong?"

Steve raised one eyebrow. "Because I wasn't wrong," he said. "Agent Romanov did most of the remote surveillance, Agent Barton backed it up with onsite observation. And anyway, if Thor or the others – if they'd been there, I could have told them to stand down till the cows came home, and they wouldn't have listened." He sighed and rolled his shoulders again. "Thor's real big on honor, and that initial attack -- a gas bomb hidden under a crowded stage – that was anything but. Asgardians are just fine with beating each other to a pulp in open challenge, but sneak attacks are kind of a big deal to them."

"And that bomb that gassed the lab," Steve swallowed, fiddled with his empty bottle, and wished he'd drunk it slower. "Stark and Dr. Banner were direct victims of that chemical agent. I've been watching them try and deal with it ever since, and they're managing. Just. But throw this at them?" He waved at the tablet again. "The chance to get their hands on the people who created that gas? Who did that to them? You wouldn't be looking at a sticky political situation right now, Colonel Fury, you'd probably be looking at a slaughter."

"You sayin' you can't maintain command of your team under adverse conditions?" Fury asked, only the barest tickle of challenge in his iron-hard tone.

Steve boosted his chin to it all the same. " _Those_ conditions," he answered. "But I'll call any man a liar who says he _could_. You've seen combat, sir, you've led men under fire. You know what it's like, working around this man's limp and that man's squint." He spread the fingers of both hands and brought his palms together so the fingers slipped between each gap like tightly enmeshed gears. "A perfect unit isn't made up of perfect men, but of men whose flaws line up just right, so another man's got the weak point covered when it matters."

"God save me from motherfucking idealists," Fury sighed, rolling his eyes. "All right, so tell me -- and in case I need to say it, Captain, the matter of mandatory counseling before I allow you to resume active duty _is_ still on the table – exactly why, despite being a direct victim of that chemical agent's effects yourself, you felt that _you_ needed to be on the ground and busting heads for this."

"That's simple, sir," Steve replied without the ghost of a flinch. "It's because I'm immune to the chemical." 

The surprise that flashed through that dark eye before Fury could wrench it back was deeply gratifying. "Your report didn't say that," he growled. "You said 'I shook it off quickly,' not 'It didn't fuss me at all.'"

"Did I?" Steve wondered, all concern. "Sorry. Must have misspoke." The truth of it, that at the time Steve had made that report, he'd been thinking about how the only reason the device had been in the Avengers Tower to begin with was because SHIELD had sent it over, he didn't intend to say. Fury was clever, he could figure it out. "Point is, I needed to run point on this op because I was literally the only one who stood a chance if it turned out that the cell had a cache of the agent ready to deploy. Which, it turns out, they did."

"And deploying that gas in the air system of the building was...?"

Steve didn't bother not to smile. "Unfortunate. One of the interns panicked on the emergency stairs when they were making for the helicopters. Dropped a whole case right on the blower unit three floors down." That _was_ actually what Hawkeye had reported to Steve, and he didn't owe it to Fury to let on that he hadn't believed a word of it, then or now.

"Mmmhmm." Fury steepled his fingers beneath his chin, eye glittering diamond-hard. "Then how 'bout you tell me why it is you felt you needed to cut SHIELD out of this operation entirely?"

Steve almost laughed in relief. He'd been braced for the worst, but for this, he actually had an answer. "Because Tony's been watching your data streams since it happened! He's had his heaviest armor on standby all week, just waiting for your analysts to figure out who was responsible so he could go after them himself." Doing the recon and analysis under his nose was about the only way we could figure on getting it done at all without him knowing. Miss Potts was happy to loan us a secure server at Stark Industries once we explained."

"Oh, I'll just bet she was," Fury murmured in a voice that promised a very long and thorough debriefing for Agents Romanov and Barton, and very possibly a visit to Stark Industries himself. Steve privately wished him best of luck there. Pepper's interrogation skills put the Red Skull's to shame. "All right, cowboy, I'm signing off on you this time," he said, retrieving his tablet with a sigh. "But you need to get yourself a little perspective on this whole Momma Bear thing you got goin' on for your crew. They are motherfucking adults, however little some of them might act like it. They need to act like it, and you... you need to get some distance here. Get out some. Go on a fuckin date. Make some goddamned friends who don't need rescuin, and who _ain't_ likely to raze the city 'cause they get a bad fortune cookie!"

"Sir." Steve gave a brisk nod and held his peace, aware that a few insults was really the least he had coming. 

The look Fury gave him said plain that he thought so too. He tucked his tablet under his arm and stood. "And if you feel any more solo heroics coming on, you either file an operations plan with your handler, or you take an aspirin and have yourself a nap, you hear me, Rogers?"

"Loud and clear, sir," Steve said, rising when the Colonel did. "Am I dismissed?"

" _Hell_ no," Fury whirled back from the door to snarl. "You're gonna get your ass down to Medical for the standard post-op exam. Then you are gonna stay on site until Stark and Banner are cleared for release, at which point you will escort them back home and only THEN," he stabbed a finger at Steve's chest, "will you tell them about this rat-fuck turd circus of yours. Because if I get a call that my medical bay has come down with a case of explosion tonight, my hand to God, I _will_ be taking it out of your star spangled ass!"


	4. Initiative and defiance

The medical ward was dark and silent when Steve arrived – well, as dark and as silent as any hospital area ever got, anyway, which between fluorescent lights, beeping machines, and bustling night-staff, wasn't really all that dark or silent at all. 

The Orderly sorting linens by the elevators gave Steve a smile, and directions to the quarantine wing's observation suite. On the way there Steve found a vending machine rigged to dispense candy and snacks at the wave of a SHIELD ID, and a tiny gift shop selling flowers and trinkets. More importantly, the shop also sold blank notebooks to help patients who'd been benched for the long haul to pass the time without boredom-related-mayhem.

They were good quality, the notebooks – most things at SHIELD were, -- a score of soft, clean pages folded between a nondescript card cover, and while they were more expensive than cheap stationery or printout paper, Steve didn't mind the expense. Each one was small enough that Steve could release his tension into doodles, sketches, and occasionally rambling blocks of script, and not feel like he had to make the smirching of the page somehow worth it. Whatever he thought, and whatever drawing tool he had was good enough for these pocket sized pages. 

The little notebooks had become his confidantes in these recent months since Steve had discovered them, the way their larger, leather bound cousins had when he'd been touring with the USO. They were his trusted outlet, the silent friends to whom he could grumble, cuss, mope, sulk and, in a few jealously guarded volumes, dream of things he shouldn't be wanting at all. Friends with whom he could be absolutely true, utterly selfish, stupid, mean, cowardly, and judgmental, all without having to worry about them flinching from him, or frowning with worry, or hiding a knowing, scornful smirk at his expense. 

Steve didn't have any of his other books with him now, not having expected a wait. Or rather, not having expected to do any waiting around in a place where his doodling wouldn't immediately be scanned, analyzed, and encoded into his file for all time. But now it seemed he had several hours to kill before Bruce and Tony finished out their final 24 hour monitored quarantine and got their all clear and their marching orders.

Tony had been livid at the idea of the quarantine, and ranted for hours about vampires, voyeurs, and having his pee sniffed at regular intervals. Bruce had tried for hours to explain to him why it was actually necessary; that even though the gas exposure had been weeks ago, the fact that it had a behavioral effect, as well as the newness of the compound meant that they really did need this kind of intense data-collection period in order to be sure there wouldn't be any lingering effects. 

He had wanted the hard data on the gas as badly as any of the researchers, that much was obvious to Steve, but Tony had been emphatically less than convinced, claiming that Jarvis could do any monitoring they'd need, and he was not going to go play lab rat for SHIELD's jollies. In the end, Steve was sure the only reason he'd agreed to go had been because Bruce said he was going to go in whether Tony did or not, and they all knew how uncomfortable Bruce was in hospitals.

Steve had commented, just as they'd been heading for the car, how sweet he thought it was of Tony to do that for his lover. That had been an unfortunate word choice, and Tony had let him know it in as much detail as he could manage with Bruce and Happy both hauling him toward the waiting car. Steve had apologized, of course, but privately, he still thought it was sweet.

And conveniently, Tony's mortified dignity and up-ruffled cool had insured phone-silence for the night's operation. You could set your watch by a Stark Sulk, really, and Steve was a little embarrassed that he hadn't actually thought to make the comment deliberately. He'd have had a lot less worry over how to handle Tony's inevitable 'I'm-bored-and-trapped-entertain-me-Steve' intrusions if he'd thought of it a week before. 

Steve paused to make a note to himself on the new sketchbook's first page : _change voice mail message ASAP._

Then he turned down the last hallway, skirting the quarantine ward entrances and heading for the lounge just past them, where the orderly had said that family and friends could visit through the window and talk by speaker. Arriving there however, he was surprised to find Natasha waiting for him, sprawled elegantly on one of the couches with a bag of M&Ms in her fist and an ice pack balanced on her knee. She cut Steve an amused glance as he drew up short in surprise.

"You're done with your debriefing?" he asked, and she returned a feline smile, lifting her supporting foot in invitation for him to sit where it had been. She laid her legs out across his knees when he did.

"Haven't given it yet," she said, pouring a handful of candy onto her belly and craning her neck to begin sorting them by color. "Boss is still busy with Hawkeye. What do you bet he's going to be awhile?"

Steve chuckled and pulled out one of the packages of Oreos he'd raided from the machine. "Sucker bet. We might have to come back for him in a week."

She snickered, sliding the tan and red candies on either side of the green ones. The yellows and browns clearly outnumbered the rest. "You know what he'll say, don't you?" she smirked, picking up the lone blue candy and putting it on the ice pack.

Steve caught her eye, noted the sparkle there, and returned her unrepentant smile as they said it together, "Worth it."

It wasn't much of a joke, really, but in the post-adrenaline, pre-sleep, fatigue-poisoned haze of the lea side of three am, it was all they really needed. They did try to keep it down at least a bit, but giggles kept bursting out every time one looked over and saw the other trying to pull it together. Natasha's careful candy piles were bounced into chaos. Steve dropped his book and the pen rolled right under the sofa. They both drew breath after breath, eyes leaking, bellies cramping for air, faces stretched in grins so wide they hurt, until finally a ward nurse came by to glower at them for the noise.

Even then, neither of them was particularly repentant about it, though Steve did try to look cowed, in deference to the nuns of his youth. He recovered his book and pen while Natasha searched out the candies that had escaped – miraculously, the blue one was right where she'd left it. She didn't say anything about it when he chose one of the small tables next to the observation window instead of resuming his spot on the sofa, but she did give that Mona Lisa smile of hers as she started winnowing the M&Ms down to equal numbers without bothering to sort them first.

In the comfortable silence, Steve looked through the glass and had to smile at what he found. The room on the left was empty, its darkness complete, its bed removed. In the other room, the two gurneys had been pushed together, their side rails dropped low, and a pile of surplus pillows wedged between them to make a nest big enough for both the men to sleep in. Tony's doing, clearly – the creative use of luggage straps and dinner trays to keep the beds from drifting made that plain. The privacy curtain had been shifted enough to shadow the sleepers faces from the light coming through the window, but neither of the men seemed to have taken the curtain's presence for a promise of any _actual_ privacy. Tony had even worn pajamas.

Steve smiled, feeling something taut and angry beginning to unspool inside him at the sight of the pair at rest together. Bruce had curled up on one side, Tony wound about him from behind with his face pressed into the shadow of soft, dark curls. His arm was slung over Bruce's ribs, left his hand curled limply open just beside Bruce's own, and when Steve peered over their heads, he could see that their other hands were also very close on the pillow. As if they'd fallen asleep with fingers linked, holding tight and sure, so the other wouldn't slip away before the dawn. 

And that, _that_ was why Steve had done it. That was why he'd tracked down the chemist and the political terrorists himself, that was why he'd gone there; to be sure, personally sure, that the monster's head was cut off, and the stump seared black; to win back for them, as far as he could, the peace to have faith in the pull between them again. He wasn't naieve; he knew he couldn't un-do what had been done to them all, couldn't scroll back the clock and make it all not have happened. Steve also knew it wasn't really his business how Tony and Bruce dealt with what they'd survived, what the gas had done, and had made them do. But it made him feel better, knowing that the people who had hurt them – hurt his _friends_ \-- knew better than to try and do it again.

Bruce and Tony weren't going to thank him for it. He knew that too, but even though his choice was almost certainly going to land him in the doghouse with his best friends, Steve knew that at least _he_ would be able to sleep better for it, knowing the matter was settled. Selfish of him, but he'd never claimed to be a saint, no matter what Dr. Erskine had thought of him.

"What are you drawing?" Natasha asked, close and quiet, and much closer behind Steve's shoulder than he'd expected her to be. 

Steve quelled the urge to flinch, and glanced up to meet her eyes in the glass. "Bucky." He smiled, continuing to scratch shading into the ballcap he remembered having been dark blue, under its habitual film of grime.

"Your sergeant," she observed with a smirk, and a nod at the page. "He was cute as a kid."

"That he was," Steve agreed, and quickly blocked in the thin, small shape that held up Bucky's out-slung arm. Bucky's old torn baseball glove, carefully rendered in precise, fraying strokes, covered almost half of the empty space's chest. "Everyone thought so, himself most of all." Steve scribbled more dark hair escaping from beneath the ballcap, and focused his attention on capturing the puckish light he remembered in those eyes. 

She watched him work for a moment, then pulled out a chair and sat. "Draw one of Clint for me?" she asked, and set the blue M&M on the top of the page. 

He took the candy and ate it with all due solemnity before turning to a new page, which seemed to please her. "Remember when he went off the roof and wound up hanging off the flagpole for that last shot at the limo?" she asked, popping a last red candy into her mouth. 

Steve chuckled, turned the book 90 degrees, and began. He kept it rough and fluid, impressions of movement and poise in deference to ink lines he wouldn't be able to erase later. In five minutes, he judged it as complete as he could make it, turned the page over, and on the back of it, did another. This drawing was of Natasha, her body arched at the apex of a flip, one hand down to brace her over the handrail, the other leveled at the atrium below, where the gas-masked perpetrators thought they could escape by blending with the panicked crowd. He'd glimpsed that move for but a second, through the roof skylight of the building, and not from this angle, but he liked it better like this.

And to his pleased surprise, when he lifted the page, the two figures curled about each other in sympathy, like the harmonic coil of yin and yang, but only if you happened to look through. 

Natasha gave a pleased hum, noticing it as well, but stopped Steve's hand when he pinched the page to rip. "Keep it till later," she said, and tipped a nod at the doorway where two security agents were lingering with ill-concealed impatience. Then with ceremonial gravity, she flipped a new, fresh page over the drawing and stood, stealing a glance at their sleeping companions as she turned.

"See you at home, Captain," she said, and the smile on her face was as genuine as any Steve had seen her offer.

"Sure thing," he nodded, then as she started for the door, caught her arm to stay her. "Hey, I wanted to ask; you wouldn't raze the city over a bad fortune cookie, would you?" he asked, trying to ignore the look that passed between the two security agents, in favor of _look_ Natasha was giving him.

"Depends," she shrugged and gave one of her pointed, sly little smiles as she slipped her hand free. "Which city?" She waited only long enough for Steve to snicker before leading her escorts from the room.

Then, when the sound of footfalls had faded beyond even his hearing, he picked up his pen again and began to draw hands in pairs; elegant and tapered, square and deft, smooth, strong, and scarred, nail-bit, stained, and perfectly manicured, callused with hard work and clean as a bright new student's hopes. 

Intertwined, all.


	5. Stoicism and wrath

"You've been avoiding me." 

Tony stepped back quickly when Steve whirled around on him, hands up, ready to hit the deck if he had to. But super soldier reflexes seemed to have stepped down a notch inside the Youth Club gymnasium, so Tony didn't have to duck a punch or anything. Though the threat of a dodgeball to the face at Super Soldier speeds was nothing to sneeze at, of course, and don't even think Tony wasn't glad as hell that Steve held onto the burgundy face-smasher instead of letting it fly.

"Oh," Steve sighed, settling into his skin with a tired laugh, and turning to toss the ball one-handed into the bin against the wall. "Hi Tony. What are you doing here?" His voice echoed in the vast, dusty emptiness; casual, friendly, and as bright as the sunbeams slanting through the high windows. Tony wasn't buying.

"I'm on a quest," he answered, kicking a ball into Steve's reach. 

"A quest?" Steve smirked.

"Yup. Trying to get a little facetime with the elusive Captain Avoidica," he replied, following Steve across the room as he continued to pick up the remnants of the epic battle he'd been refereeing when Tony had first arrived at the Youth Club half an hour ago. "You can smile, but that's actually harder than usual lately, for reason of see footnote re, 'guilty avoidance'."

Steve picked up a ball in each hand and slung them into the bin together with a chuckle. "What does that even mean?"

"It _means_ you've been either Sir-Not-Appearing-In-This-Episode, or fronting casual, normal-cakes, nothing to see here move along tra-la for like two weeks!" Steve gave him a skeptical look, and Tony glowered. "Two fucking weeks, Steve! Okay, so I went off on you for sneaking around and defeating evil behind my back, but you totally had that coming!"

"I did," Steve began, but Tony cut him off.

"So where do you get off playing the shunning game on me?" Tony demanded, hands braced on his hips. 

"Shunning-"

"Shunning!" Tony shot back. "For two whole weeks! You haven't even yelled at me for hoarding dishes once since then. We ran out of coffee cups in the team kitchen this morning! They were all in my workshop! All thirty of them!"

At last, Steve cracked a laugh, shaking his head. "We don't have thirty coffee cups in the team kitchen," he said, dropping to fish out a stray ball from under the bench, and incidentally pulling the sweat pants taut over his extremely decorative ass as he did so. 

"Right. Because they're all in my workshop, as I've just _said_ ," Tony agreed, looking away quickly as Steve stood up. 

"So what's the deal, Cap?" He reined in the sass a bit, let slip a bit of the concern that had finally driven him to follow the man down here, and lurk in the shadows while he refereed a horde of terrifyingly bloodthirsty teenagers through their dodgeball massacre. "You really that pissed over my _entirely justified chastisement_ , or are you not all that okay after all?" Steve frowned, but Tony wasn't ready to let it slide. "You need to see somebody about..." he flapped a hand vaguely in the direction of the month old elephant they were all still tiptoeing around. "I mean nobody would think any less of you if you did, you know that, right?

Steve sighed and stood, dusting his knees. "I'm _fine_ , Tony," he said. "I don't need to see anybody, and I haven't been avoiding you. _Or_ shunning you." Well he would try that, wouldn't he? But Tony still wasn't buying, and he said so with a look. 

Steve had the grace to look abashed at that, at least. "All right, maybe I have been a little bit," he admitted. "I just thought you and Bruce could use a little space after all that happened."

"A little space?"

"That's all."

"And what, did you decide this little space of yours was gonna become a permanent thing?" Tony growled, prowling in close to poke Steve in the chest with a finger. "Because two weeks is a lot of space to leave your friends after a fight. Especially when there was heroism, and maybe injury, and they're both wondering whether you're really okay."

Steve shrugged and brushed Tony's finger off. "I was fine," he said with a shrug and a grin that seemed no more fake than usual. "Still am fine, I've just been doing more down here, is all." 

Tony glared, fully aware that Steve's definition of 'fine' was just as entirely not-fine as Bruce's was. Both of those idiots had this idea that as long as they weren't openly bleeding there was nothing to report, and sure it might be hypocritical of Tony to object to that kind of bullshit, but he was an expert in it all the same.

Thing was, though, that he and Bruce _had_ needed the time at first, when it was all Tony could do to figure out the right balance of normalizing and processing and grieving needed to help his Best Bruce Ever through the remembering that that just because evil made use of you, that didn't make _you_ evil. Steve steering clear of the lab, workshop, master suite, and common room had been a mercy then, but now...

"Anyway," Steve went on, looking everywhere but Tony's face, "It's nice to spend time with people who have problems I can help with. Problems that don't involve hitting anything."

"Apologizing for going behind our backs wouldn't involve hitting anything," Tony pointed out quite reasonably, he thought.

Steve raised an eyebrow. "Apologizing? Like I did the morning I told you about it?" he challenged. Which was total bullshit, because even 90 year old fossils had to know that apologizing before the other person was even done being mad did _not_ count. 

"Hey, you got something to say, then spit it, old man," Tony challenged with his biggest, brassiest grin. "You need to take a swing, then fine, come on back to the tower and I'll suit up so we can go a few rounds. I even got Dummy a brand new fire extinguisher."

"Stop," Steve said, shaking his head and giving in to a chuckle. "Tony, just stop. I don't need to hit anything, let alone you. Last thing I wanna hurt is you. And Bruce. Either of you." He gave a shrug and a helpless grin that might as well have been a plea for mercy. "You two still seemed like you needed your privacy, especially after what I pulled while you were in quarantine. I understood you were mad, but I really was just trying to be considerate."

"Well quit it," Tony snapped. Steve's eyebrows went up, surprised and, Tony thought, just a little bit pleased. "I don't like it, and all that space you're giving us is starting to make Bruce stupid with the guilty. If I want you to go away, I will tell you exactly how far, but in the meantime, I want you where I can see you!"

That drove the smile out of Steve's eyes, replaced it with a telling weariness. Tony would have staked 70% of his SI stock shares that it was only the serum that kept Steve from looking underslept, grey, and hollow with stress. But before he could say so, Steve hardened under his stare and thrust his jaw. "Tony, I'm _fine_!"

"Then you won't mind proving it," Tony challenged, not giving an inch. "Look, neither one of us can remember what happened. Medical says that happens a lot with these kind of drug compounds, and Jarvis says the energy discharge from the device scrambled his cameras for half an hour after it went off. So all we have to go on is evidence, you going over all grudge match on the bad guys, and a very sketchy incident report you filed with SHIELD the night it happened."

Steve sighed and scrubbed at his face. "Pretty sure your clearance doesn't include Incident Report access," he grumbled.

Tony grinned. "If I'm named in it, I get to read it," he declared. "It's a rule. And it's also not the point. The point is, in the absence of memory or evidence, all we have is imagination, and I hate to say it, but Bruce's imagination is some morbid, grisly _shit_." He grabbed Steve's arm and began walking him toward the exit. "So can we quit with the Steve-shaped-hole please? Cause it's totally fucking with our groove."

"Tony..." He wasn't surprised when Steve shook him off, but the chagrined look was something he hadn't expected. "I can't just come and hang out in the lab with you two like I used to. I took on extra classes here for the semester."

"Classes."

"Art twice a week. And I'm tutoring a few of the kids in history and geography too. The center doesn't get many volunteer teachers, and I can't just ditch them now."

"No problem," Tony said, digging in his pocket. "I'll hire a replacement. Two replacements. Teachers are crying for work these days, and union or not, that's-"

Steve plucked Tony's phone out of his hands before he could call up the search engine. "Completely not fair to the other teachers who _are_ volunteering their time without pay here," he said. "Also not the point of my wanting to work with these kids when I don't have to fight the bad guys. They need me."

Tony pouted, dewy eyed and lip-wibbling as he trotted out his best pleading whine. "But Steve, _we_ need you too!"

And that finally did the trick. Steve cracked a grin, then a laugh, head shaking, gold hair gleaming in the low afternoon light. "Okay," he managed at last.

"Okay?"

"Yeah," Steve sighed at last, wiping at his eyes. "You obviously have something specific in mind. Soon, if not tonight, right?" Tony nodded, hopeful. "So, I'm in, long as it isn't up against one of my classes, and I can reschedule my tutoring sessions around it."

"So tonight?" Tony ventured. "Like, now-ish?"

"Give or take a shower," Steve answered, nodding and setting off toward what Tony assumed had to be the locker room. "Do I need to dress up or anything?"

"Nah, it's just a movie night. But _Real Genius_ is a classic, and really the Mythbusters only half-assed that experiment they did with the popcorn, because if they were gonna even _try_ to replicate the effect they totally should have done the math with an alloy resonant to the laser so it'd actually heat up properly, which, by the way, we're pretty sure we've got -- in theory, at least. Hey, how much popcorn d'you think you and Thor could actually eat before you got -"

"Fine, fine." Steve put a hand to Tony's chest, stopping him just shy of the locker room door. "Give me five minutes to get cleaned up, and you can tell me all about it on the drive home, ok? In the meantime, get my bag out of the office, will you?" He pointed at the opposite wall, and metal door in need of new paint. "It's the second down that hall. I left it on the director's desk before the game. He should still be there." And then he disappeared inside before Tony could even complain.

Of course Tony complained anyway. It was something of a hobby, after all, complaining about Steve when he didn't really mean it, and Tony liked to keep himself in practice. Helped him keep from actually gushing like a fanboy when _Captain America_ went and did gorgeous, ridiculous, heroically perfect bullshit like avenging the smirched honor of his lover, or saving Tony's ass -- literally, this time.

According to the reports Medical had on his episode under the gas's influence, Tony might have – in the moment, anyway – been all for sexing up Bruce's supersized alter-id. He'd apparently made some pretty creative demands of the staff before they could hit him with a sedative strong enough to overcome the stimulants in the gas. But Tony had, through decades of painstaking research and adventurous sex, long since learned where his limits were, and even assuming generous lubrication, about an hour of very patient manual prep, and the Hulk being a shower rather than a grower, he still had some very strong reservations about his being able to take the Big Green Monster.

Whereas Cap, the big, dumb boy scout, had leapt on that grenade, rolled with it (literally – hah!) and if he was to be believed, had shaken it off afterward, easy as a plane crash. Then he'd found the bad guys, given them a pants down spanking on national TV, and now the idiotic, perfect fucking hero wouldn't even stick around long enough for Tony to square the debt – probably didn't even think there _was_ one, knowing him, but Tony wasn't having any of that. What Steve had done for him – had done for _them_ was above and beyond, and there was no way it was gonna sink unrecognized! Besides – the thought of all those size queen jokes going to waste was more than Tony could reasonably be expected to take.

He tugged open the door Steve had pointed him toward and, distracted, walked through it – straight into someone else. 

He went sprawling – the skinny little hipster, not Tony – books and papers sloshing across the polished linoleum as he skidded to a stop, mouth open, face white, plaid trilby spinning on its crown a yard away. Well fuck.

"Sorry kid," Tony said, pasting on his best gladhanding smile as he crouched to offer a hand, "Didn't see you there."

"Did you fucking _look_ , asshole?" the kid spat, ignoring Tony's hand and scrambling to grab his shit back up.

"No, I save looking through solid doors for my dayjob," Tony snarked back, not bothering to pick up any more, and dropping the two cheap little moleskines he had picked up on the floor as he stood. "What's your excuse?"

The little shit flashed Tony the finger as he stretched for his hat, then yelped when the flash of Tony's phone lit him up like the skinny twist of bad attitude he was. "Hey! You can't do that!"

"Call it legal insurance with a dash of social networking," Tony smiled back at him, "You get 15 seconds of fame and proof I'm the asshole you think I am, I get proof you're really not injured at all, and Twitter gets another 140 characters worth of Tony Stark. Now about the hashtag; #'PretentiousTwitCan'tFly', d'you think, or would #'BodycheckFail' be more accurate?"

"Fuck you!" The kid snarled, and shoved his way past. To Tony's delight, the heavy metal door did, in fact, hit the little creep in the ass on the way out, slamming shut so quickly afterward that Tony couldn't have shouted to him that he'd missed some of his stupid little notebooks under the radiator even if he'd wanted to. Which was fine, given that he didn't want to.

He found Steve's bag just where it was supposed to be, slung it onto his shoulder, and headed back for the locker room, willing to put up with the funk of sweaty boy-clothes if it meant the chance to scope Cap's ass while he was dressing. And thank God for the Army shaking all trace of body-shyness out of the man, because the scenery had _definitely_ improved around the tower after Steve had finally relinquished his Brooklyn apartment and moved in. Another thing they'd all missed during his 'space' – Steve making bacon in nothing but his shorts every Sunday was almost worth getting up early for. Because apparently the super serum negated the naked bacon rule for some awesome reason Tony never cared to question too closely.

Unfortunately, Tony's luck was off today. He made it to Steve's locker just as he was tucking his tee shirt into jeans that looked like he'd sent them out to be starched during the game. "You got plans for food," Steve asked, setting his wet hair right with one distracted swipe of his fingers, "or should I grab a hot dog or six on the way home?"

Tony smirked. "Movie night equals pizza in my book," he said, slinging the bag Steve's way without warning just to watch him catch it anyway. Which, of course, he did. But the scowl of fond annoyance he sent Tony's way afterward faded away almost before it had settled, becoming something more frozen, something more worried as his gaze flicked down to the notebook in Tony's hands.

"Tony, is that my sketchbook?" Steve began, reaching for the blue moleskine. 

"This? Nah, some little..." But the assurances died when Steve flipped back the cover, and every drop of blood drained out of his face. "Steve?" he asked as the man dropped suddenly to the changing bench, yanked open his bag and rifled fiercely inside. "You okay, buddy?"

The rifling stopped. Steve took a deep breath, and when he raised his head to meet Tony's worried gaze, he wore a very different frown. "Where are the rest of them?" he asked, and his voice was a mile of ice.

And just like that, stomach sinking like lead, Tony knew. "Probably on their way to a reporter right now, courtesy of a sweaty little pickpocket in skinny jeans," he grumbled, thumbing up the photo on his phone and tapping his hip pocket to establish that yes, his wallet was, in fact, gone too. 

"Let me see," Steve growled, shoving to his feet and staring for all of a second when Tony turned the screen to him. The recognition hit Steve so hard Tony wanted to flinch from it, but a second later the betrayal was crushed under the famous scowl that had inspired incontinence in Nazis and Supervillans alike. "Got 'im," Steve said, and sprinted out of the locker room.

Tony paused only long enough to grab up the bag and notebook, and to tell Jarvis to locate the RFID chips in his cards so they could track the little cretin. "Push the data to Steve's phone too," he added as he jogged toward the exit door, still swinging from where Steve had hit it like a hurricane. "In fact, just activate his to comm-state, and –" He flinched as the sudden sound of roaring engine, squealing brakes, and a cabbie shouting in Pashtu erupted from his phone.

"Pull over!" Steve roared through the speaker. "NOW!"

"Sir," Jarvis said as Tony sprinted toward the flashing red icon on his phone's map, "The passenger of the taxi Captain Rogers is attempting to stop seems to be making a cell phone call. Directory lists the number as belonging to Spotter Magazine, at the extension of one Miss Kip Wellesley."

"Fuck," Tony ground, dredging up a little more speed as up ahead at the light, a taxi swerved suddenly to the right, wove left, and then hopped the curb, crashed through the chain link surrounding a small park, and tipped nose-first into the sunken handball court, leaving its drive wheels spinning in futility over the muddy grass. Steve, who had apparently been clinging to the roof, bounded free and rolled to his feet beside the rear door as the cabby, in full panic, and probably with a couple of warrants to his name, kicked open _his_ door and ran for the hills. Steve didn't so much as look. He was too busy hauling emo-thief out of the back seat by his scrawny little neck. 

The kid's phone spun from his hands, sliding across the handball court like a hockey puck until Tony skidded to a stop and picked it up. "Sorry, wrong number," he wheezed as the reporter's voicemail picked up. Then he thumbed the phone off, gasped a couple more breaths, and hurried over to try and stop Cap from murdering the little idiot – which he really almost looked like he was ready to do.

"Where are they?" Steve was snarling, red faced and furious as the kid squirmed in his grip, blustering and wheezing and trying not to cry. "The other sketchbooks you stole! What have you done with them?"

"You're crazy, man!" the kid yelped, clutching at Steve's arm as he was shaken like a rat. "I don't even know what you're-" Steve shook him again, hard, and as he flailed for balance, a tumble of bright plastic slithered out of his sleeves.

Trying not to wheeze, Tony slid to his knees and gathered the credit cards up, not at all surprised to find that all of them bore his name. "God damn it," he grumbled, stuffing the cards into his breast pocket. "You little asshole, that wallet was actually worth more than you could get off any of these! You better not have ditched it in a sewer, or I'm totally not even gonna talk him out of kicking your teeth in."

The kid actually did sob then, his eyes rolling and terrified. "I don't know what you're talking about!" he squealed, "I found them like that! On the sidewalk! You musta-"

Steve shook him again, using the side of the cab for percussive emphasis, and leaning in, nose against nose when the kid's lies trailed off into sniveling whimpers. "What have you done with my God-damned sketchbooks?" he hissed. 

And Tony had seen Captain America kicking ass against Doombots, Aliens, and mutated crustaceans, but he had _never_ seen Steve Rogers look quite that terrifying. Even the Red Skull probably would have wet himself in terror if Steve had gone _that_ shade of scary on his ass, and ... hello... 

"There," Tony said, grabbing Steve's arm and pointing. Inside the cab the collection of little paper notebooks lay scattered across the floorboards, covers gaping to show pages tickled with ink and graphite. Steve let the kid go so quick he might as well have slung him aside, and a second later he was half-clambered into the cab, snatching up every scrap of paper he could find, and cursing like the battle-hardened soldier he was.

Tony grabbed the kid's jacket collar and helped him to his feet. "And this is the part where you stick around and face the music, cupcake," he said, frogmarching him to a bench and shoving him down into it.

"You got no right to-"

"Actually, I do," Tony grinned. "That's how a Citizen's Arrest works, dumbass. You steal from me, I make sure you stick around till the cops show up. You steal from _Captain America_ , though, and you better think about begging me not to update that hashtag, because the Avengers fan-tweets can have you trending so fast your picture and home address will turn up whenever someone googles the word 'douchenozzle' for the next ten years." Tony grinned as the blood drained from the kid's already pale face, and added, "And that's _before_ Cap there calls your mom to tell her personally what you got up to today."

There, at last, the kid's nerve actually broke. "He... You. He'd do that?"

It was on Tony's tongue to promise it – to describe in detail the epic guilt trip Steve was capable of dishing out, only all of a sudden Steve was looming over them, eyes blazing, face set like stone, fists clenched so hard they trembled. And suddenly things didn't seem quite so likely to stop with a parental conference anymore. 

"There are two missing," Steve said in a voice like distant thunder.

"Oh fuck..." The kid closed his eyes and hid behind his hands. "Don't kill me, please don't kill me, I was putting them back, and she said you wouldn't even know, I didn't send any of the pictures yet, I promise, you can check my phone and-"

"Wellesley paid you for this," Tony growled, half furious, half triumphant as he fished the kid's phone back out of his pocket. "She set this whole thing up and left you with the dirty work, didn't she? Well you better get this open and delete those pictures you took before- hey!" Tony yelped as Steve snatched the phone from his hand, turned on his heel, and fastball-whipped it at the cinderblock handball barricade. It struck with a chiming shatter and exploded into a hail of plastic and glass.

"There are two," in the dust settling silence, Steve's whisper was as loud as cannon fire, "missing."

"I – I don't know! I fell! He made me drop them, I swear, and-" he screamed as Steve snatched him back up to his feet again and shook. 

"THOSE ARE PRIVATE!"

"OH GOD PLEASE NO!"

"STEVE!" Tony lunged, shoved himself as much between the two as he could, given the grip involved. He pushed both his hands on Steve's chest, his back against the fists knotting the kid's jacket, and said it again; calm, reasonable, and positively not shaking in his shoes. 

"Steve. Ease up. We got this. Dweezil here did drop his whole pile back in the Center, remember I picked one up? We'll just go back and look in the hallway. See if the missing ones are there. And-" he pressed on and Steve's lips curled apart over his teeth, "And if they aren't, if so much as a scribble of your work shows up in any press medium anywhere, then we got him, dead to rights. Face on my phone, fingerprints on my cards and your books both -- hell, Jarvis probably already has his middle name and directions to his home address queued up in my maps file." The kid moaned behind him, sagged in limp surrender against Tony's suit. Steve drew a breath, closing his eyes but not yet opening his hands. "We got this."

Tony held his breath. It felt like they all held their breath, even though the kid was actively sniveling all over Tony's jacket. Then finally, Steve sighed. "Yeah," he said and opened his hands, letting the thief collapse in a nerveless, weeping puddle. "But he comes back to the center with us. And if we don't find those books..."

"We will," Tony said, patting Steve's chest in the second before he stepped away. "Hey, why don't you go on ahead?" he asked, turning to grab the kid's arm and and hoist him back to his feet. "Don't want them to lock the place up before you get back there to look, right?"

Steve considered the wrecked cab, the smashed phone, then the lowering orange sky. 

"Go on," Tony urged him. "I'll get lightfingers here put together, call the wreck in to the cops, and we'll be there right after you. We got this. We're good. Go on."

He liked to think that the glance Steve threw his way before shouldering his bag again and jogging away was a grateful one. Probably because he knew that if Steve had stayed long enough to watch Tony rescue the smashed phone's data card from the wreckage, his expression would not have been nearly so kindly. Chances were good that once he'd calmed himself down, Steve might even want to replace the kid's phone, but not if he realized that they'd left the photograhs lying around the park in digital form for anybody to pick up and run away with. 

"You know you're actually lucky he caught you," he told the kid, tucking the sim card into his trouser pocket. "Even luckier I was here with him when he did. Wellesley probably played up Cap's boy scout, anti-bully, likes puppies and little kids reputation when she convinced you to do this, didn't she? Told you all you'd have to do was cower a little bit and he'd back right off you, right?" The kid didn't answer, just stood there, shivering with random hiccups and looking miserable. Tony grinned at him. "Thing is? She's right. Cap's got a hell of a temper, but he probably wouldn't have hurt you...much, and he'd have felt bad as soon as you spat a little blood. Then, once she'd bailed you out, you would have been able to recover the sim card on your phone and deliver the photos as per the plan." 

He stood, strode, and hooked the kid's elbow before he could think about ducking away. "But then those pictures, whatever they were, would have been printed. And _then_ you wouldn't have been dealing with Captain America, you'd have been dealing with me, my lawyers, and the technological network that's probably good enough to find you anywhere in the world."

He kept his voice pleasant, cheerful, and kept a firm grip on the kid's shaking arm as they walked. "And if I couldn't find you, there's also the Black Widow, who's been owning the spy versus spy game since the Cold War, and Hawkeye, who deserves his title for more than just his aim. Oh, and Thor too, who has a buddy who can see through fucking _worlds_ , and I just wanna mention that you probably will want to look up the word 'Holmgang' and 'Long term physical effects of a direct lightning strike' when you get a chance, just to get an idea what kind of ass-kicking you'd be facing with him. But they're not actually the ones you should be worried about. The one you _should_ have been worrying about is bigger, greener, and much less reasonable."

The kid made a whimpering noise, and Tony patted his hand. "Yep. There's only one person in this whole world who can reliably tell the Hulk what to do, but when he's really, really mad, not even Cap can stop him. And someone betraying Cap's trust, invading his privacy and selling his personal items to the press for profit? That would definitely make Hulk very, spectacularly, _incandescently_ pissed. So." Tony turned them up the walk to the center, very aware that he was just about the only reason the kid was still moving at all. Quite possibly the only reason the kid was standing up, actually. "Let's have a quick review before we go in, shall we? Pretend I am Wellesley – no, pretend I am anybody else in the entire goddamned world. What did you see when you tried to rip off Captain America's private sketchbooks, son?"

The kid swallowed, took a shaking breath, met Tony's eye for a long, defiant moment, and then opened his mouth to speak. And then he froze. Inside the gym, something banged against something else, and the sound seemed to echo through the wiry little arm in Tony's hands like the kid was made of goatskin stretched tight over bone. A taut little drum-head of bad ideas and worse implementation only just now realizing how fragile it really was, and that some drumsticks came bigger, and hit harder than others.

"I... nothing," he managed after a moment, a whisper dry and cracked with stress. "I never looked inside."

"And that," Tony agreed, tugging them forward through the gymnasium doors, "I think we can all agree, was probably for the best."


	6. Courage and bitterness

"Okay, this is October 29th," Tony said into the camera, "ass end of eight o clock in the ungodly AM, when all right-thinking people are still in bed, but here we all are in frigid upstate to see whether SHIELD's biochem lab is better than the Tea Party's drug cooks."

"It was the Centipede Project, not just the Tea Party, Tony," Steve said, appearing over his shoulder with a frowning mouth, but glinting eyes. "We wouldn't need the counteragent to that gas if they hadn't been involved from the start."

"Psssht!" Tony flapped a hand at him "Semantics have no place in research documentation! This is about data!"

"I thought semantics WAS research documentation," Clint passed through the frame to snark.

"Accurate," Tony allowed.

Behind him, Bruce himself was untying his shoes. He remembered that he'd been trying not to laugh, but on the video, he just looked queasy and nervous. "You just like saying 'Tea Party's drug cooks,'" he accused.

"Also accurate," Tony grinned with a backward glance. "And it's time for components check. Vector one, you loaded and ready?" Tony turned the camera to Clint, who was perched behind Natasha on an ATV, checking his bow. There were only three arrows in his quiver, and one of them was fletched in scarlet.

"Yep," Clint said. Then, when Tony's hand appeared in frame to gesture impatiently at him, he rolled his eyes and continued. "We're going to that ridgeline there, where I'll find a covered vantage-"

"Climb a tree, he means," Natasha interjected.

"Covered. Vantage. Then I'll shoot the gas arrow, and stand by with the backup vector for the counteragent, and a knockout gas in case it's needed."

"Right," Tony agreed, and the camera swiveled wildly until it settled on Steve. "And vector two? That's you, Captain." Wordlessly, Steve held up a small glass phial, the liquid within colorless against his heavy leather work gloves. Tony sighed dramatically. "Since _some of us_ don't seem to get the point of _documentation_ , what Cap's going to do is wait here with Bruce for the gas to deploy. Jarvis and I will be monitoring both their biodata readouts, and on my signal, he will..."

Steve raised his chin, pale and determined. "When you tell me that Bruce ... or the Hulk is reacting to the gas, I'll crush the counteragent phial, get it close enough that he gets a good whiff of it, and see what it can do. If it does anything."

"Aaannnnndddd?"

Steve's face didn't shift, not really, but something in his eyes went from frozen to heated in a flickering second. "It won't affect me," he insisted. "I've been exposed twice already."

"But if it does?" Tony sounded merciless on the tape, and it jarred in Bruce's memory against the worried expression that had been lurking under his 'new experiment' mania at the time.

"If I feel strange, I'll say so, and Hawkeye can put us both to sleep before anything happens."

Bruce paused the video, scrolled it backward ten seconds, and set it to play at one-quarter speed, and there. Between 'anything' and 'happens' Steve's eyes flickered, so quick that Bruce had missed it the first three times he'd watched this video, but that tiny little tell might as well have been a scream out loud now that he knew to look for it. 

Steve's steadfast, competent gaze had skittered just then -- to the left, Bruce thought, and down a little bit. He closed his own eyes, trying to remember what might have been in that field of Cap's view, and failing. Bruce had had his own nerves knotting in his stomach at the time, and he didn't have Steve's gift of eidetic memory to fall back on. The best his memory could supply was that the recording equipment, the medical supplies, Tony's armor, the extra cameras, and the remote hub for Jarvis and the drones had all been in the same place, and that down-left spot might have been it.

He was just about to rewind the scene and watch it again when the glass door to the apartment slid aside, and Tony wandered out onto the balcony. His shirt, expensive and scarlet, was buttoned down far enough that Bruce could see the scars where the arc reactor had been, cuffs rolled up to show forearms that would make a blacksmith proud. Tony looked the picture of effortlessly rumpled elegance -- for the two seconds it took him to shrug his way into a ragged Iron Man hoodie, anyway.

"Well _that's_ two hours of my life I won't get back," he grinned. "But the lawyers are happy, their CEO is happy, my CEO is... not displeased, and the ink is drying as we speak." Tony wound himself into the cool, empty space Bruce hadn't realized was waiting at his back, and rested his chin on Bruce's shoulder. "Except without the ink part, I mean. Because digital and all. So. Corporate takeover accomplished."

"And you're now the proud owner of a Russian toy factory." Bruce surprised himself by smiling, the tension in his belly unspooling a little. "I'll admit it, I still don't know exactly why you wanted it."

Tony groaned. "Oh don't. You sound like Pepper."

" _But_ ," Bruce went on, "I'm glad you're happy."

"Nope. No good. She said that too." Tony sighed. "Almost the same way you did. Said to tell you hi, by the way. So: Hi! Want pizza?"

Bruce craned aside enough to land a kiss on the bridge of Tony's cheek. "Sure," he said, and let the looming specter of Pepper-and-Tony-not-quite-yet-at-peace slip quietly out of the evening. "Just let me turn this off, and I'll-"

"Ooh, are we watching porn?" Tony asked, grabbing after Bruce's tablet before he could tap 'close', 

"Tony," Bruce complained, trying to wrestle it back without revealing the face, "that really is rude."

"Rude porn is the best though!" Tony's grin bristled against his neck as they halfheartedly wrestled. "Come on, Brucie, I always knew you were kinky. Whaddaya got? Bondage? Spanking? Three way?"

"Vanilla," Bruce retorted, giving in to the laughter at last, "Utterly, completely vanilla-" and that, of course, was when they both lost their grip, and the tablet went skittering across the balcony. Tony, closer by a few feet, lunged after it, and only just stopped it from slipping under the rail and smashing to pieces on the party deck two floors below.

"Vanilla's nice sometimes too," Tony grinned, but then he flipped the tablet over, and.... If Bruce hadn't spent the last half hour analyzing microexpressions, he might have missed the way Tony's grin froze, the way his eyes darkened, lost for a moment in that stilled frame of Steve's evasion. For a sliver-thin fragment of a second, Tony was falling, and Bruce didn't stand a chance at catching him.

Then he blinked, and his playful grin turned on again, as bright and wicked as Vegas neon. "Vanilla, he says! Vanilla my ass – this is pure uniform kink, and you know it!"

"Tony," Bruce sighed.

"No, really, we can roll with this," he leered. "Want me to dress up in red, white, and blue and bark orders at you? I mean of course it wouldn't be half as sexy as when Captain America does it, but for you I'd be willing to give it a shot."

"I wouldn't know," Bruce grumbled, taking care to keep his voice down as he snatched his tablet back, "I'm not usually the one who's there when Cap's giving orders, so I have no basis of comparison." He smiled to take the bitterness off his words, and plopped down into the low-slung chair next to Tony. "And speaking of orders, what do you want on your-" he paused as Tony's fingers curled around his wrist, weighty and gentle at once.

"He would, you know," Tony murmured. "I bet he would give you orders, if you wanted him to."

Bruce's heart thudded in his chest; a flailing thing of secrets and sorrows and terrible ideas, a giant green fist knocking to be let out. He drew a deep, slow breath, and told it to shut the hell up. Then he smiled and deliberately misunderstood. "Cap tends to give orders in battle, Tony," he said, calling up the pizza menu on his tablet. "I'm not the one of us you all want around when there's a fight on-"

"No. Stop it." Tony's voice was suddenly as hard as his armor. "Steve just went to the mat with Fury about his, and you know it. The Hulk comes out when you're ready, and not before."

"Not even if he's needed," Bruce nodded, trying to ignore the twist in his guts, telling himself it was guilt, not rage.

"You know Steve will call you in," Tony countered, swinging up to his knees to make a grab for Bruce's face. "If we really need the Hulk, he'll ask you to let him out and-"

"Will he?" Bruce bit out, dodging out of Tony's reach. "Will he really?"

"You know he will!" Tony cried. "Steve trusted the Hulk enough to-"

"Because I don't know what trust looks like to you," Bruce ground over him, fingers calling the video up again, and unerringly scrolling it forward to the moment of his transformation under the gas's influence. "But _that_ face doesn't say 'trusting' to me." He stabbed at the frozen image: past his own bulging, greening shoulder, to where Steve stood waiting in the background, skin pale as milk, mouth a bloodless slash across his chin, eyes a wide and helpless and blue in the hazy morning light. "It says 'terrified'."

Tony didn't answer. For several long moments, his gaze was a warm, weighty thing, resting like a blush on Bruce's skin. "I did think he was gonna puke for a second or two there," he said eventually, in a voice that was precise, careful, and just a little bit worried. He reached for the tablet again, hands slow and tentative this time. Bruce didn't brush him off, and Tony carefully scrolled the video forward, so the writhing, bursting, howling green metastasis that overtook him was done in a flicker. Steve was so still, so frozen throughout the change that even under fast-forward he hardly looked out of focus, as if he'd forgotten how to breathe. Bruce took a breath of his own, but didn't let himself look away either.

"But look at him here," Tony said, starting the video at proper speed again just as the Hulk, teeth bared in full roar, had thrashed out of the small gas cloud, and was casting about himself for something to hit. "Watch what Steve does..." he urged, carefully drawing the video's frame in on Steve's face as he blinked once, and switched all at once into the man who'd hunted the world's first supervillain the length and breadth of Europe. His jaw hardened, his eyes went steel-bright and sharp, his shoulders drew back, dropped from taut-strung tension to battle ready poise in a micrometer's space as he smashed the phial between his hands, and stepped forward, calling the Hulk by name.

Bruce had already watched it. He'd seen himself whirl on Steve, seen the gigantic fist coming up, as ready to kill a friend as save one. He didn't want to-

"Watch him, Bruce," Tony whispered. "Watch his hands. See how he's holding them out? Like an offer, not a shield?" He ghosted a tap at the gloves, stained wet, bright glass shards tickling out between the fingers as Steve held them up. "Look at his eyes, right there. Right _there_ was when he decided he could trust you, and he walked right into your reach without a blink."

"He..." Bruce swallowed, wanting to look away, but unable. "That was the plan. He was supposed to-"

"He was supposed to wait for my signal," Tony answered, fond annoyance sharpening his tone. "Asshole jumped the gun on me by a good twenty seconds, _but_ ," and here he tapped at the screen again, pausing it and returning the frame to normal; the great green fist hung up midair, spittle flying from the gust of his roar, and Steve at ground zero, smiling up at him. "This right here is where _your_ readings began to change. _Before_ you sniffed the counteragent; right when you saw that it was Steve there with you, and not an enemy; that's when you started to chill out. Your heart rate dropped, dermal tension dropped, temperature even eased back a couple points. And the reading from drone number three was good enough that I could see your irises start to dilate too."

Bruce blinked. "You've already... when did you get time to over the readings?" he demanded.

Tony had the grace to look ashamed. "While you were sleeping off the changes this afternoon. Verified them during the Skype call. Please don't tell Pepper, she'll actually kill me if she finds out I wasn't listening to every word she said."

" _I_ might kill you myself," Bruce growled. "We were supposed to go over this data together."

"We were supposed to watch the video footage together too," Tony shot back, "But you didn't wait for me either, did you? So don't go getting on your high Hulk, because we both did the same thing!" 

Bruce shoved the tablet at Tony and thrust to his feet, not trusting himself to speak, not trusting himself to be near the infuriating man for even another second. But of course, Tony wasn't ready to let it go just yet. 

"We both went looking for proof," he said, dragging on Bruce's hand as the tablet clattered unheeded to the tiles. "And we both found it, but your data was incomplete, and your hypothesis is wrong." His fingers were warm against Bruce's skin, the calluses rough and bitten at the edges as he clung, eyes an endless depth of emotions Bruce couldn't even begin to name. He closed his eyes rather than try, and felt Tony's thumb stroke over his wrist. "It's _wrong_ , Bruce. Steve's in no danger from the Hulk. Not really. Not even when he's drugged."

"Steve doesn't know that," Bruce heard himself say, and hated the flat disgust in his voice. "He was terrified."

"Course he was," Tony agreed, and Bruce felt him ease near, the warmth of his skin blocking out the chill October night, the woody tang of his cologne overpowering the ghostly scent-memory of rank fear as he slipped his arms around Bruce's shoulders. "But only at first. And I'm pretty sure he was more scared of himself than of you, big guy." Bruce blinked, startled and confused, and Tony barked a laugh at his expense. 

"Hell, why d'you think he insisted that he had to be there for the test in the first place? You and I both know we didn't need any human there except you and me, and maybe Barton if I didn't feel like flying the Quinjet! Steve went out there with us _because_ he was afraid." He nodded at the tablet, and Steve's upturned, steady hands. "He was afraid that he was going to _be_ afraid, seeing the Hulk again. Like I was scared of how I'd feel when I finally came back to the City again after the Chitauri – I was more afraid I'd act like a spaz than I was of any actual thing I remembered seeing or doing here." He shivered just a little, and Bruce knew the drawing evening had nothing to do with it.

"So he was scared," Tony said, low and resonant and warm against Bruce's guilty chill. "And when have you heard of Steve doing anything but the most reckless, dumbassed heroic, daredevil bullshit possible when he's shit-scared?" He shook his head, his beard rasping a heated burn against the side of Bruce's jaw. "That's what Cap _does_ with fear, Bruce; he stares it in the eye until he and it and the whole world realize that it isn't bigger than him after all. And then he steps right over it."

"And punches out Hitler again," Bruce sighed, allowing himself to lean back into Tony's embrace at last. 

"Look, babe," Tony murmured, hooking his chin snugly over Bruce's shoulder. "I get it; you miss Steve, you care about him, and you want to know he's okay. And there's nothing wrong with that," he stressed. "I miss him too. But lurking by yourself in the dark and brooding about what might be broken instead of rolling up your sleeves and trying to fix it is kinda fucked up, don'tcha think?"

"Thus speaks the engineer," Bruce smiled. "And I wasn't brooding. I mean I didn't come out here to... I was just..." Realizing he didn't want to say more, Bruce turned, pressed the line of his face from temple to jaw along the same stretch of Tony's, and just breathed. He knew it didn't particularly make things better between Tony and Pepper for him to avoid the scene whenever they talked, but the tension they hadn't yet figured out to settle did still get to him. Sometimes, when he was stressed to begin with, it was just too much to face. Not that the alternative had been any more restful...

"I get it," was all Tony had to say. Then he jostled them both forward a step, and his sudden grin bristled against Bruce's cheek. "So let's order an extra pie and get him up here to help eat it. We can all go over the data together, and he can pretend not to be bored out of his skull while we talk math and chemistry over his head."

And just like that, the warmth went out of Bruce's stomach. "I don't think-" he began, but Tony's sudden clench around his middle halted his turn.

"Fine, fine. We'll let him beat us at Tetris if you're feeling masochistic," Tony griped, all camp as he bumped them another step forward. "He should be back from the Center by now, right? Jarvis, call up his schedule, and we'll-"

"He didn't go."

Tony stopped pushing. "He didn't? But it's Tuesday. He teaches figure drawing on Tuesdays."

"Not anymore." The words were thick as dust in Bruce's mouth, but they hit like anvils in Tony's eyes. "The Director of the center called earlier while I was sleeping on the sofa downstairs. Steve was in the kitchen, cooking, I guess. Took the call on speaker..." Bruce swallowed, wishing he'd been as asleep as he'd pretended at the time. Wishing he hadn't actually heard it all, and worse, watched it hit Steve like a bullet to the gut. " _The Spotter_ ran an exclusive yesterday about him volunteering there." 

The night air was icy when Tony yanked himself away from Bruce's back, cursing viciously. "God damn it! God _damn it_ , I will burn that bitch Wellesley _down!_ " he snarled. "What the hell did they print?"

"Full photo spread; him coming and going, him with the students in the gym and in his classes, his tutoring sessions," Bruce sighed, still feeling the burn of disgusted outrage even hours after he'd gone and looked the story up. "Pretty much everything but him in the locker room."

"That's all?" Tony asked, seeming strangely almost relieved. 

"They printed kids' names too," Bruce told him. "The Youth Center's besieged by paparazzi now, all trying to get shots of him. The staff and students are being harassed by reporters, all the classes are being disrupted. Some of the kids' families have even been contacted at _home,_ Tony." He spread his hands, arguing the case as much to himself as to the lowering anger in Tony's face. "The Center can't operate like that."

"Fuck." Tony turned his face to the night, as if he was calculating the exact trajectory from there to _The Spotter_ 's offices. Then he unclenched his fingers and said it again, louder. " _Fuck!_ Well fine. Tetris it is then. Jarvis, where's Cap, down in the gym?"

"Tony, don't-"

"I'm sorry Sir. Captain Rogers is not on the premises," Jarvis replied, subdued. "He left the Tower on his motorcycle approximately an hour ago, after using the barbecue grill on the party deck."

Tony's brows drew together and he turned to look over the railing to the deck below, where Jarvis brought up a pool of light. The grill was still open, but the smooth, flat flakes of ash inside it were long past cool, and their sharp incense long since unspooled into the high city wind. 

"He burned his sketchbooks," Bruce said, joining Tony at the rail so their shoulders pressed hard, each into each. "He burned his sketchbooks without a word, and none of us knew what the hell to say to stop him. I'm pretty sure Steve won't be interested in Tetris and pizza tonight."

To which Tony only said once again, with heartfelt anguish, " _Fuck_!"


	7. Brooding, and cutting loose

"No," Steve said in a voice as calm and level as glass. "I'm not lost. Thank you."

Six men chuckled from the dockside shadows, and the spokesman loudest of them all. "Then you know who's street this is," he said, stepping up tight into Steve's space. "And you know how this is gonna go down."

Two more came in behind him, close enough to grab him if they thought he was going to twitch, and it was almost, _almost_ on Steve to let them, to give them a reason to try, because damn, wouldn't it feel good to let that seething rage come bleeding out into the world at last? Wouldn't it taste live and real and red rolling around his mouth before he spat it back out into the world's face and took his own shot?

Instead, he met the leader's eyes without a blink, and said. "I don't think that's a good idea."

That got another laugh, one that burned in Steve's belly like live coals. "Course you don't, sunshine. You look like the kind who oughta leave the thinking to somebody who don't have such pretty white teeth to knock down the gutter. Now. Coat first. Unzip it slow."

Steve took a deep breath, crammed the rising, animal joy in him down, and called to the night beyond the streetlights, "There's only six of them. I'm fine." 

The small throng of muggers rattled with sudden nerves and gunsteel. Steve held himself still as the leader's fist wrapped tight in his collar. "Who the fuck are you talking to?" he snarled, breath smelling of meth and perogies. 

"The assassin up on that fire escape," Steve answered, cutting his eyes left, "Sniper on the other end of that roof, and I'm pretty sure that's the Daredevil at the end of the street, too." A growl of thunder chimed through the dockside, rattling glass and sheet metal all around them. "And Thor, apparently," he sighed, glancing up at the cloudless sky. 

It took less than half a minute for the muggers to all think of other pressing engagements. 

"Not that I have anything against company," said the red-masked hero, sauntering into the pool of the lone streetlight as the footfalls rang away, "But if I'd known the Avengers were gonna come trolling for muggers in my neighborhood, I'da baked a cake or something."

"Not my intention," Steve answered, turning to meet him and shaking the thwarted battle tension from his hands. "I was just taking a walk."

"In Hell's Kitchen?" 

"In a lot of places," Steve shrugged, offering his hand to shake. "It was a long walk."

"Understatement!" Clint put in as his bow sang, and punched a line anchor into the loading bay door behind them. A moment later, he slid down it and dropped into the light as well. "We've been out here like five hours now! You might owe me a new pair of shoes after all this, Cap."

Steve scowled at him, hating the heavy handed normality he was laying on. "Nobody asked you to-"

"Dont' be naive," Natasha's dark silk voice curled out of the dark at Steve's other shoulder. "Of course we followed you after that show at the Tower. Frankly, I'm shocked that Stark isn't out here too."

"Trouble in paradise?" The Daredevil asked, not quite smiling.

Steve reminded himself that picking a fight with another costumed hero might make it a more even match, but that still wouldn't make it right. "The fourth estate," he replied instead as the wind picked up around them, skittering trash and dust about the narrow canyon land of glass and steel. "Apparently we can't have nice things."

"Oh yeah, that Midtown Youth Center thing," he nodded, tapping his eyeless hood with one finger. "I heard about that." Then he cocked his head to the side and stepped back out of the light, murmuring, "Incoming..."

And then Thor dropped out of the darkness in a flurry of scarlet and blurring steel. "My friends," he called, grinning and easy as if he hadn't been off world for the past two months, "Have our foes fled so soon?"

"No foes, Thor," Steve said, turning to offer a hand, and subtly put himself between Thor and the Daredevil, at least until introductions could be made. "Just some fellas down on their luck, was all. They let it drop once they cottoned on they'd bit off more than they could chew."

"Shame, too," Natasha mused, "I was beginning to consider paying some punks to try and mug you just so we could get it over with and go home."

"I wasn't trying to get mugged!"

"Coulda fooled me," Clint griped, reeling back in his zip line. "Half the streets you dragged us through I wouldn't have gone down in full daylight, let alone this side of twelve! I thought you had a police blotter for violent crime memorized or something, the way you were sticking to the bad parts of town."

"To be fair," the Daredevil put in, smirking, "this town has more bad parts than good parts. And not all of us plebeians are funded by Stark or Xavier."

"Good parts of town felt...hollow," Steve admitted before Clint could rise to it. "Too noisy. Too bright. I just wanted a quiet walk. On my _own_."

"It's good to want things, I hear," Clint grinned, jostling Steve's shoulder with his own. "Builds character. Come on, it's just about last call; if we head back to the tower by way of the Bowery I'm sure someone there'll be drunk enough to throw a punch at you, Cap." Natasha snickered, and Steve's temper seethed up all over again.

"God damn it, Barton, I don't want anybody to throw a punch at me!" he shouted.

"Do you not?" Thor put in, sounding confused and strangely disappointed. "Alas, for I have had a trying day, and much anticipated a bout against a worthy foe to settle my blood."

The Daredevil took a step back at that. To be fair, though, Barton took a step back too – the slowly spreading grin that was taking over Thor's face was equal parts invitation, dare, and palm-spit promise of the kind of fun that was gonna get someone's hide tanned before the broken china was all swept up. 

"I think he's lookin at you, Cap," Natasha murmured.

"Aye," Thor said, giving Mjolnir a lazy swing in his fist before tossing it aside, "I am looking at you." The hammer dimpled the sidewalk when it hit, and three rats went skittering into the drain. "What say you, Captain? Two falls of three, for the right to say whose day was the worse?"

Steve closed his eyes, pinched his nose, and told himself firmly that he was an adult – a Captain, not a kid with patched britches and a warehouse full of windows just waiting to be knocked out with rocks. Getting his lip split wouldn't fix anything, really – the Center would still be struggling to survive, the reporters would still be circling like sharks, Bruce would still look at Steve like he was broken inside, and Tony was still going to be gloriously in love with someone entirely out of Steve's league. Fighting wouldn't solve anything. Not really. 

"Guys, I really don't think-" And that was when Thor hit him. 

It wasn't much of a hit – just a quick little jab to the meat of Steve's shoulder, -- but with Thor, it didn't _take_ much. Steve flipped backward, his feet scuffing trash and leaves into the air as someone whooped. He had just enough time to ball himself up tight and roll when the air gave way to pavement, and then he was tumbling, fetching up between a cinderblock wall and a half empty dumpster with a grunt.

Footfalls were coming, quick and heavy. His shoulder throbbed, but answered when he flexed it, and suddenly Steve was grinning as the jittering, seething, filthy, tarry anger he'd been choking on since the afternoon took fire and blazed to life. He rolled toward the dumpster at the last minute, hurling the first thing that came to hand – either a used diaper, or a dead cat, could have been either, by the smell – straight at Thor's head. 

Thor gave a roar of disgust when it hit him, but Steve's fist driving into his diaphragm cut the sound off short. It also folded the Asgardian low, and lined his bearded chin up for the most beautiful uppercut Steve could have asked for – and really, who was he to pass it up? The crunch of his knuckles, the ringing clack of Thor's teeth, the scuffle of boots on wet leaves, and then it was Thor's turn to go right over backwards.

Somewhere behind him, Steve heard two sharp claps. "That's one fall each," Natasha called, obviously amused as Thor climbed to his feet, grinning and wiping maggots out of his hair. "Does the next fall take it?"

Thor met his eye, head-tilt a merry dare, a can of fuel on the flames as he flexed and then knotted his fists and settled low in his guard. "I call that no true fall, Widow," he called. "If you would give us a scoring, then let us have a real match of it!" 

"Yeah; that was just a little stumble," Steve laughed, circling behind weaving fists. "We haven't even got started yet." 

Thor lunged, jabbing at Steve's head. Steve slapped his fist aside and wove low, close inside Thor's reach so the taller man had to skitter back or risk another body shot. He clipped Steve's ear on his way by though, a grazing slap that would have rung his bell if it'd hit square. Both of them had merry hell in their eyes when they fell back to circling.

"All right then," Natasha said, sauntering calmly in between them and holding up both hands, "Hard house rules: no melee weapons; empty hands only. Thor, please don't electrocute the Captain. Found projectiles are fair unless they're steel, glass, or Mjolnir. Visible blood gets a pause of three seconds to assess – my count, not yours. A fall is ten seconds on the ground – again, my count, not yours." She glared at them each in turn as they continued to circle around her. "And I will not count out loud, by the way. You can tap out at any time, but if either of you waits to yield until you're really hurt, then both of you have to sing the 'I'm A Little Teapot' song right in the middle of the medical ward, am I clear?"

"Sure," Steve laughed, not sure how she planned to enforce that edict, but not entirely caring. 

"Aye," said Thor, and even as Natasha stepped back, he lunged at Steve, throwing a haymaker with his left while grabbing for Steve's collar with his right. Steve let him catch it, and stole two quick jabs to Thor's floating ribs before skinning out in a backwards roll that left the leather coat dangling like a pelt from Thor's fist. He came to his feet almost laughing, with his eye on Thor's cape by way of a return trophy.

Capture the flag had never been this much fun back in boot camp.

~*~

Aloft and out of the way, Clint watched the blonds circle and scrap, relieved all the way down to his blistered, cramping toes. "Well thank God for that," he sighed, and kicked his legs through the railings of the fire escape. "I thought sure we were gonna be cleaning up bodies down here tonight."

Daredevil's boot whispered on the steel beside him, but the man didn't sit. "Really? I thought Captain America didn't do much killing."

"Captain America's had a really shitty couple of months," Clint replied. "Like the kind of shitty that makes regrettable things happen if someone doesn't step in and defuse the situation."

"I've had that month," the other replied. "Nice of Thor to stand up for it then. I get enough bodies down here already." He cut off in a sudden hiss, and Clint looked down to see Cap tumbling ass over tit down the street, Thor sprinting after him like he was chasing a soccerball. One half of his cloak had come free of its fastening, and trailed like a bloody cloud behind him as he ran. 

Cap gained his feet just a second later and sprinted right at Thor, ducking outside of the God's startled roundhouse to grab a handful of trailing cape in one hand, and the light post in the other. He slingshotted himself and the cloth around the pole, yanking Thor up short for just long enough that Steve could plant both feet square in the small of Thor's back and ride the Asgardian to the ground like a surfboard.

Clint didn't need to hear the cloth rip – Thor's enraged/delighted bellow told the tale.

"Y'know, that actually looks like fun," he chuckled as Steve leapt to avoid Thor's thrashing grab... but didn't quite make it. "Kinda." He winced as the corrugated steel buckled around Steve's shoulders when he hit the warehouse wall.

Behind him, Daredevil snorted. "What, two oversized bruisers beating the shit out of each other in an alley? Suit, that looks like Tuesday to me."

Clint trained his face backward, one eyebrow boosting in challenge. "Oh, so I guess you don't wanna play too then?"

The blank-eyed mask gave nothing back, but the mouth twisted briefly upward as the man scoffed and shook his head. "Nah. I gotta trade knuckles with a smart assed sharpshooter every time Bullseye makes bail, I don't need to dance with you in the name of fun."

"Aww, what's the matter?" Clint called after him as the Daredevil tensed down tight, then sprang into a backward flip that carried him the last half-story to the roof. "I thought you were supposed to have no fear."

"Yeah, 'cause I've never heard that one before," came the grumble of reply. "Look, I got a thing. You guys try not to burn too much down before the cops turn up, okay? There's some homeless squats not too far from here still."

Grinning, Clint threw him a salute. "You're on, double D. We light it, we fight it."

The horned helmet gave one brief shake, silhouetted against the never-quite-dark city sky. "Avengers..." Daredevil said as he turned to go. "And you wonder why the press won't leave you alone..."


	8. Inscrutability and hunger

"Look, I'm not gonna explain, cause that would take too long, but let me sum it up for you;" Tony said, peering over his carburetors at the screen where Fury scowled down at him like the Patron Saint of Thou Shalt Not, "Bruce needs to come off the bench now. He's been cleared by medical, our experiments upstate showed he had a diminished response to the gas on his second and third exposures, _and_ he responded to the counteragent seamlessly every time, with no detectable side effects. Except for that lingering taste of cheese he mentioned, but that in no way constitutes a good reason why he shouldn't be riding with the rest of the posse."

"That so?" Fury challenged from behind his steepled fingers. "And what does the sheriff have to say about that?"

"Cap thought Bruce was ready before you even had us test the counteragent, and you know it!" Tony said sighting along the length of his socket wrench and glaring. "He wants the Hulk back in the field as much as any of us."

"And you trust his judgment?"

Tony put the wrench down and set both feet onto the floor. "You did not just ask me that. Why would you _even_ ask me something like that?"

"Oh, I don't know, Stark; maybe because Cap's face got splashed all over the tabloids _again_ last week," Fury snarled back.

"I told you, PR is handling that!"

"Or maybe because I'm looking at shitty cell phone pictures on Tumblr right now of him and Thor wandering through the Midtown dockyards looking like they'd just crawled out of the wrong end of a bar fight."

"Dude, you're on Tumblr? Where do you find the _time_?"

"Or because Rogers hasn't gone to a single counseling session since that motherfucking bomb went off in your workshop two months ago," Fury shouted over him, "so I don't have any actual intel on where the leader of one of my best tactical teams is at in his head, except for what comes to me through you clowns!?"

Tony grinned. "Aww. I didn't know you cared, Director."

Fury's chin dipped down and he glared like he could light Tony on fire with it. "You do not want to know how much I care, Stark," he said, then, "What, exactly went on in Hell's Kitchen last night?"

Shrugging, Tony returned to his carburetor. "As I understand it? Team building exercise."

"Team building-"

"Yeah, I hate those things too. Never go to 'em if I can get someone to give me a blowjob instead, which kinda blows, 'cause this one actually looked like fun."

"Looked like fun?" Fury tapped at his desk, and the monitor screen filled up with a grainy shot of Steve and Thor, their mouths open in either laughter or song, arm in arm in the classic too-drunk-to-walk-alone-so-we're-spotting-each-other-in-a-controlled-forward-fall pose. Thor was crammed into Steve's bomber jacket and sported an impressive shiner over his left cheek, Steve was wearing Thor's cape like a serape and drooling blood all over it from his split lower lip. "Looked like _fun_?"

"Yeah," Tony managed not to laugh, but damn, it was close. "You know that people do have that don't you? Fun? And it doesn't even have to involve toppling emergent non-capitalist governments, either."

"Stark..." Fury's scowling face reappeared. "You're gettin' awful cute with me for a fella come askin' for a favor."

"Look, Fury," Tony sighed at last, "I really wasn't there. Steve went out while I was on a conference call to Singapore, and I didn't see him or his fat lip till breakfast the next morning, which is when I learned that we had Thor back, too." He shrugged, smiling to remember the laughter that had drawn him and Bruce out of bed, and the relief of walking into the group kitchen to find that Thor's bright, easy cheer had banished the lowering gloom they'd both spent the evening dreading from Steve. 

"All either one of them would say about it was that they drank, they fought, they made their ancestors proud, and of the two of them, Thor'd had the worse day," Tony finished. "Me, I think they kicked off a little dust, is all. If you want more intel on it, try asking Natasha. She usually knows more than she lets on."

Fury looked at him like he was stupid. "Agents Barton _and_ Romanov are both debriefing," he said. "And you still haven't given me a straight answer; is Cap up to dealing with the Hulk in the field, or not?"

"You answer me one first," Tony challenged back. "Why don't you believe Steve when he tells you he's okay? This is more than the old 'soldiers are too stoic for their own good' thing, and it's more than 'this is a valuable asset' too. There's something making you pick at this, and I want to know what it is before I go selling out my best friend." 

He hadn't meant to say that, hadn't realized those words were coming out of his mouth until he saw Fury's eyebrow boost, but Tony stood by them all the same. Steve _was_ his best friend, filling a spot in Tony's life that even Bruce, for all his brilliance and sweet, shy passion fell short of. 

Fury broke first, but Tony got the feeling it was more because it actually _wanted_ to read Tony into the sitrep, than because he'd got tired of glaring. "The Captain isn't the only one who's shown immunity to that gas," he said, lacing his fingers together on the table. "About three per-cent of those tested – all volunteers, before you ask, -- showed little or no immediate response, just like he did. All shared the same blood type as Rogers, so we're going with the theory that it's a genetic quirk rather than the serum at work."

Tony shook his head. "Poor sap, cheated by his genes again. What?" he said to Fury's _look_ , "that gas was fun stuff, according to the med-tech's reports."

"Sure," he said, leaden. "Until about two weeks afterward, when that same three per-cent started having severe depressive episodes and anxiety attacks." Fury nodded, smug and angry as Tony sat upright again, his spine a wash of ice. "Yeah, we got two agents on suicide watch right now, actually, so you'll excuse me for taking some concern for the _one_ goddamned testing sample who won't actually talk to a fucking shrink at all!"

"Depression and anxiety?" Tony verified, not letting himself care that he was tapping at the scar tissue where his arc reactor had been. It was his nervous tic, damn it, and the rest of the world could bite him if it objected. "Mood swings, nightmares, crying jags, that kinda thing?"

Fury grimaced a heartfelt, "Shit."

"No, don't jump the gun on me here, just answer."

"Well, add in self-harm, compulsive behavior, hypervigilance and suicidal ideation, and you've about covered it," he allowed, suspicious now.

Tony let himself smile. "Okay, just making sure. Because according to my Dad's notes on Rebirth, Cap doesn't get any of that brain-chemistry fuckery. Serum maintains optimum chemistry in Steve's system, so while yeah, he'll react to a hard shock like anybody else does, he shakes it off afterward. They documented it when his buddy died in combat – Steve went into a tailspin that lasted a couple of days, but then he was out of it, and back to work full steam."

"And in two weeks he was crashing a plane into the arctic," Fury growled. "Color me less than convinced." Then he unlaced his fingers and began tapping at his desktop again. In the bottom corner of Tony's monitor, his mail icon flickered incoming. 

"In case you've forgotten how things actually work in this world," Fury went on, "let me remind you what is at stake here; the Avengers get a pass from the kind of oversight most Federal Agencies answer to not because of their power, but because they _look_ good. The Powers That Write The Checks like what they see when the team takes the field, so they're mostly content to chew on my ass when you screw up and act out, and leave you out of it. But if you start looking shaky when the chips are down, especially Poster Boy, then you will find that the slack I have heretofore been able to afford you _will_ begin to erode."

Tony gripped his wrench hard enough to cramp his knuckles -- it was either that, or he was gonna be buying himself a new monitor. "You think you, or anybody can make us-"

"Don't be naive, Stark," Fury cut him off. "You know damned well how the game is played, so don't go cryin' about the stakes to me. Just read the analysis I sent you, and tell me straight out; can the team take down this Centipede project flunkie before he takes his weapons research to HYDRA and buys his way into favor with the first Hulk-effective chemical agent we've ever encountered?"

"That's what he's after?" Tony blinked, opening the file and scrolling through it quickly. "Dude's got halfway clever tech and a chemical agent worth the trouble and he's nosing after HYDRA's tits? Talk about low hanging fruit. And what kind of a fucking name is 'Acidifer' anyway?" 

"Name of a loser who wants to be remembered for winning," Fury answered with an unamused smirk. "Which is why _I_ need the world to see the Avengers proving that this loser's toys do not work as advertised. And for that, I need to goddamned well _know_ that the Avengers can _do_ it, otherwise I got other, quieter options."

"But if he's sniped in an alley, his research doesn't die with him," Tony nodded, getting the point. "And we start seeing other compounds tailored on that gas turning up wherever we go." 

He sighed, and scrubbed a hand through his hair. "Look Nicky, I hear what you're saying. You need Cap on top of his game and believe me, nobody in the world except possibly for the very spry and surprisingly tangible ghost of Phil Coulson wants to see Steve hurt less than me. But depression is a _disease_ , and just like every other disease he's ever been exposed to, Steve Rogers _is immune._ " He held up his hand, forestalling whatever scathing rebuttal Fury was cooking up. "And I also want it known that if I thought that Steve _was_ cracking from the pressure, I sure as _hell_ wouldn't be asking you if my lover could come out and play superheroes under Cap's command!"

"Stark," Fury pinched the bridge of his nose, "you are sharing again."

"No, I'm making a point," Tony said, emphasizing it by actually pointing at the monitor. "I'm way too selfish for stupid displays of loyalty, and you know it. I'm a textbook narcissist, remember?"

"Not likely to _ever_ forget that one," Fury grumbled.

Tony grinned back, and settled his chair up on its two hind wheels. "So trust that if you can't trust Bruce's word, Cap's word, or my word that they're dealing ok. Trust that I love my own ass too much to let someone else's issues get it killed unless absolutely necessary."

Fury gave him that 'lighting you on fire' look again, and said, "Do I _look_ like a trusting man?"

"Yeah, well we all have to do things that make us uncomfortable sometimes, Nick," Tony answered back. "So you just leave Cap to his team, okay? We've got his back. _All_ of us – in the field and off it. And as for this Acidifer clown, you just sit back and watch us give him the pants-down spanking he truly deserves." He finished with his very best Senate Hearing bullshit smile, and was not disappointed in the clanging eyeroll it got out of Fury. Better yet, the Director hung up without bothering to retort.

"Jarvis, save these files to my box, and delete them off the main server," he said, covering the dissected carbs with a shop towel and standing. "I don't want anybody else tripping over this and going off half-cocked."

"Of course not, Sir," Jarvis answered primly. "What a dreadfully unfamiliar turn of events that would be. However would the Avengers cope with one of their number undertaking dangerous work with insufficient preparation and backup?"

Tony glared at the camera above the monitor. "You got a point to make, J?" he dared.

"I believe I just did, Sir," came back his implacable reply. "Shall I place your standard pizza order for tonight, or do you expect Prince Odinson and Agents Romanov and Barton to join your evening?" The time stamp in the bottom of the screen was flashing, as blatant a reminder for Tony to get his ass out of the workshop as Jarvis ever bothered to give him anymore. These days he usually just found it easier to go running to Bruce or Steve and have one of them cockblock if he was worried about Tony's fatigue poison levels.

Giving a stretch that sounded a little bit like Chinese New Year, Tony considered, then shook his head. "Nah. I'm pretty sure the Terror Twins are grounded tonight, and Thor's probably catching up with Foster. It oughta be just the three of us as usual." 

"And may I inquire, Sir," Jarvis went on as Tony tossed his wrench aside and headed for the elevator. "Do you intend to share the Colonel's information regarding the gas's side effects with the Captain or Dr. Banner?"

Tony actually took a minute to think about that one. "No," he decided eventually. "Well, I might tell Bruce, but Cap would only be insulted, and he's twitchy enough already without someone calling his competence into question."

"And does 'twitchy' not, by definition, cast doubt on the matter of competence?"

"Not if it's justified," Tony answered, heading for the bar once the elevator opened on his own apartment. "He just had a bad couple of days."

"If you will forgive the contradiction, Sir, I had never, before Tuesday afternoon, seen him destroy his own property in anger."

" _You're_ worried about him too?" Tony asked as his stomach knotted up and sank a little. Jarvis had decades of Tony's best boy-on-fire act as his baseline standard; he'd handled some pretty stupid behavior with little more than light nagging in the past. For him to actually try and meddle with anybody else got Tony's attention faster than all the threats Fury could ever have mustered on him.

"It _was_ decidedly out of the Captain's character," Jarvis answered, bringing up the security feed on the TV. Steve was standing in front of the grill; eyes as hot and blue as the gas flames, his jaw locked so hard it could have carved an ocean liner in half. As Tony watched, he opened one of his shitty little moleskines, fanned its pages, and set it directly over the lighted hob. The paper caught in an orange flash and roar. Steve didn't so much as flinch.

Then, once the paper had whispered into curling flakes of ash and cinder, he did it again. And then again. Then he turned the gas feed off and stood very, very still, watching until not a single glimmer of red remained in the grey, weightless pile of destruction. "The Captain only destroyed three of the twenty or so volumes my records show him having used at one point or another in the Tower," Jarvis offered as on the screen, Steve completed the destruction by pouring a bottle of water over the ashes and rendering them to mud. "But the destruction seemed to me-"

"Wait, three of them, you said? Not the whole shooting match?" Tony grabbed the remote and scrolled the feed backward. This time paying closer attention to the books themselves, and there – that one with the rip halfway up the back cover. That happened when Tony had hauled it out from behind the radiator at the Center. The other one, the blue one, had a greasy shoeprint on one side from where it had been trodden on in the floor of an unlicensed cab, and the last one could easily have been one of the missing books over which Cap had lost his shit when the kid had claimed not to have them. 

' _Those are private!_ ' Cap had screamed it at the kid, nearly had the little punk wetting himself. So private that the most noble man in the world was ready to hurt a stupid, greedy little kid over them. So private that the thought of them being published would drive him to furious panic. And what, in all the world, was more private than a proud man's despair? 

"Shit," he decided, sinking into the sofa and clicking off the feed. He dug into the pocket of his jeans and found the simcard he'd carried on him since the day he'd gone to drag Steve back home from the Youth Center. He flipped the tiny chip of plastic over and over in his fingers, considering the problem with new eyes, and new worries. 

It wasn't just a matter of trying to make himself grow the hell up and respect Steve's privacy anymore. If there was anything to worry about, if Steve had been wounded by that damned gas after all, then those vanished books would be just where he'd have done his bleeding, stoic fucking martyr that he was. And a vulture like Wellesley would have just loved to be the one to trumpet 'proof' that the Avengers' fearless leader had feet of clay, wouldn't she?

Tony had to look at the pictures the kid had taken now. He _had_ to.

It took him two minutes to get through the passwords and encryptions, another minute indulging himself in gratuitously mocking the thief's fashion taste and penchant for pouty-lipped selfies, and then he was at the last gallery. Tony took a breath, reminded himself that his dad's work, from Rebirth to Manhattan was solid, brilliant, and above all, reliable. Iced over the old man may have been, but he knew his shit. He knew _Steve_. And Howard had said that Steve would be okay.

Then Tony tapped the first drawing, and when it expanded to fill the tablet's screen, he nearly dropped it in shock.

Because was him. 

Tony's face was turned upward in the drawing, eyes hooded and hazy, cheeks darkened in a graphite flush that makes the wanton gape of his lips a filthy invitation. There was the shape of a hand just roughed out along his cheek and jaw – barely a suggestion of negative space, except for the shadow it left on his skin, the weight implied on his tongue by the not-there thumb that arched in over his spit-gleaming bottom lip to press it still. It was him, Tony Stark so perfectly accurate in the rendering that he had to rack his brain trying to remember when Steve could _possibly_ have seen him looking like _that_!

He came up blank, but startlingly aroused.

The next was no better – except for how it was like a whole order of magnitude better, and more baffling, and more terrifying all at once. Tony's heart was pounding, blood singing in his ears like it did when he was flying full throttle and screaming with laughter. His fingers shook as he called the rest of the stolen pictures up, frame by gorgeous, insane, fucking incandescently hot frame, and by the time Tony got to the last one, he understood deeply and completely exactly why Cap had been ready to kill the kid for stealing them.

He was also ready to grab the inscrutable bastard by his musclebound neck and shake the stupid out of him for having fucking _torched_ the drawings. And also more than half inclined to get his flies down, his hand on his aching prick, and let loose a little pressure while he'd still got the room to himself, because God _damn_. Instead of doing either, Tony just scrolled through the pictures again, taking time to thoroughly appreciate the artistic merit of each one. He _was_ an art collector, after all.

He was on this third viewing fifteen minutes later, when Bruce came in, rumpled, adorable and thankfully still distracted from the work he'd left cooking in the lab. Tony cooly, utterly unruffledly and without hurrying or panicking at all, shut the slideshow down before Bruce could cross behind him and get an eyefull.

But either Bruce had x-ray vision, or Tony wasn't as smooth as he'd hoped, because not ten seconds later, the doctor was leaning over the back of the sofa to kiss Tony's ear. "What are you looking at?" he asked with a smirk at the blanked tablet.

And well, why the hell not? 

"Porn," Tony answered tossing the tablet aside and craning back to demand the filthiest kiss possible given their relative positions. And one of the very _best_ things about Bruce was the way he never, ever said 'no' to kisses like that. In fact, once he got past the inevitable initial freeze-up, what he had to say was frequently a lot more like 'that all you got?' 

Tonight was no exception. He had Tony's shirt rutched up tight to his armpits by the time they came up for air, Tony's nipples peaked and tingling between his fingertips, and damn, but there was a lot to be said for the good doctor's 'carpe fucking diem' attitude these days. "You know if Steve's on his way up yet?" Tony purred, threading his hands into Bruce's curls and tugging until he could get an earlobe close enough for nibbling.

The double pinch he got in return made Tony see very happy stars for a second or two. "He was just cleaning up his brushes down in the lab when I left," Bruce murmured, rolling his thumbs gently over the sting, and setting up a glorious slow burn in Tony's tits. "I'd say we've got about five minutes till he gets here..."

Tony, randy, relieved, and refusing to feel guilty about it, skinned his shirt over his head and leered. "We're fucking geniuses, Bruce," he said, popping the button on his jeans and flopping over on the couch, "We put our minds to it, five minutes will be _plenty_ of time..."


	9. Reticent and responsible

People tended not to ask Steve about the War. Whether this was out of courtesy to his loss, in deference to his rank and fame, or out of bored disinterest with all things non-digital, he didn't know, and didn't often care. He had his share of war stories, the funny ones, the grisly ones, the disgusting ones, the ones that made his heart race with fear even all these years hence – his memory, still serum-perfect, held them all like flawless gems in his mind; light inside diamonds, unchanging stars, pristine and private. One day he'd tell those stories, he figured, one day when he had someone who really wanted to hear, instead of just thinking they should listen to be polite. Or not even that much, in Tony's case.

But if anybody _had_ asked him about the War – asked what, out of all the boredom, fear, pain, aggravation and battle-joy stuck with him the most, Steve would have had to say it was the smells. 

The way your nose learned the signs of danger so quick, so deep that you could never again get a whiff of wet earth without tasting it carefully for undertones of cordite or blood; the smell of food that was too old to taste good, but not so old that it would _definitely_ make you sick; the smell of thrush in a foot, rust in a gun, or rot in a wound; the sweat-sour smell of a liar afraid of discovery, as opposed to the sharp musk-burst of a man who was just scared of dying; the furtive, half-guilty, half-defiant smell of another man's spunk, newly spilled and blood-hot, wafting abroad in a close, dark, almost-private space that everyone knew wouldn't be safe for long, but was good enough for now because you had to take what you could of comfort when you had time and opportunity for it. 

It was that smell which had greeted Steve when he'd come down to the common room after his shower for movie night. After Tony's warning, Steve had decided that in the interest of his team, he really needed to normalize the situation, and if that led to some internal awkwardness on his part, well, he _was_ a good enough actor to have hornswaggled the Red Skull, after all. They didn't need to know a thing about what was going on inside his foolish head, heart, or balls. They didn't need to know anything aside from that Steve was there, and enjoying their silly movies while the rest of the team came, went, or made themselves scarce, as their own interests dictated.

And it was working – Steve knew it was. The agents had eased down from their watchful alert status around him now, and the two scientists were easier with him too, less tentative, less fearful. He didn't think they were ready to have him haunting the lab or workshop again as he'd done before, but he probably shouldn't have been doing that to begin with -- not once he'd realized how he felt, what he wanted, and what it would cost for him to get it. No, he had better manners than that, and it really was enough to see Tony happy with Bruce again – to see the pair thriving, healing themselves.

But this... this was a bit harder to take with a smile.

Tony had been perched on the kitchen island, smug, rumpled and flushed, Bruce at the stove furtive and pleased, and _that smell_ had curled around Steve's brainstem like a lightning strike straight down to his balls. He'd been half hard and fully mortified in three seconds flat, and that thick, musky, hungry scent had stuck with him like a haunt all night, blending with Bruce's microwave popcorn and Tony's Scotch whiskey until Steve had actually had to hide himself under a throw pillow to maintain any dignity at all. The bright colors and hectic noise of the movie had done its best to eclipse the whole thing with fancy cars and time machines and lightning, but that memory-smell, and the hard-on just wouldn't fade.

Nor would the notions that haunting smell invoked in Steve's brain. Had Tony engineered it? Crowded Bruce into a corner, opened his pants and stroked him until they both spilled? Or had Bruce knelt, tasted, emptied Tony of a measure of his habitual sass? Had they kissed to silence the gasps, or shoved fists, sleeves, shoulder-meat between their teeth instead? Or had they been loud, shameless, and lucky in their timing? How close had Steve come to catching them at it? If he'd not paused at his easel to fix that wonky foot, would he have seen them unguarded, uncaring, unwary, chasing release with every stroke, accepting the benediction of adoration from each other with perfect, beautiful trust?

And if he had seen them that way, would he have been able to bear it?

Steve watched Bruce and Tony with at least as much attention as he gave to the movie, which was silly, flashy, and self aware in a way that even Steve could tell was dated, but which the other two men clearly adored. He watched Bruce subtly leaning into Tony's careless, easy sprawl – knees and feet and idly fiddling hands spanning every gap between the three of them, as if Tony needed the touch to remind himself they were real, that he wasn't alone with the machines. Bruce, comfort unasked, still couldn't help drawing into the touch while it was offered. Steve knew what that felt like, to go so long without a friendly touch that your skin got to starving for it. To want it so bad that when it finally came in a twine of arms, a weight against your side, or the press of a hand that stayed put could fill you with spreading, shaky relief that washed the starch right out of you. Sure, it could be hard to brace yourself back up again afterward, but oh Lord, he remembered how good it felt to just let go... When you could. When it was safe.

When you weren't asking for too damn much.

Steve was careful to sit still, centered to himself on the sofa with his too-long limbs tucked tidily in, but still easy enough in his skin not to draw undue notice. He didn't fidget away when Tony's reached across Bruce's shoulders and started idly picking and fiddling with Steve's shirt collar, didn't nudge back when a sideways lunge brought both of Tony's feet across Bruce's lap and almost into Steve's. He kept his face turned toward the screen and watched in reflected glass as the pair of them gradually, cosily, melted into each other beside him. That was when Steve gave up watching the movie and instead watched the two most guarded people he knew soften trustingly into sleep. 

"Turn the movie off please," Steve murmured to Jarvis when Bruce began to snore against Tony's throat -- a gentle, whuffling sound that did not rouse so much as a twitch of Tony's eyelid. 

"Of course, Captain," Jarvis answered in the same tone as the volume faded by subtle degrees. "Shall I bookmark your place in the film for later viewing?"

"No, it's okay," Steve said, easing his thighs out from under the tangle of feet.

He wanted his sketchbook, wanted to take advantage of this moment, to capture the reality of the two together – somehow more intimate, more beautiful than all the ways his imagination had already fit them together on the page. He wanted to trace the sweetness of Tony's face without its habitual caul of challenge and dare, to shade Bruce in glowing hues that owed nothing to wariness, grief or shame. He wanted an honest picture of this, not one colored by his own selfish greed.

But Steve had burned that sketchbook for a reason. He'd been lucky enough to stop his dirty little obsession from getting out once, and he knew better than to let it off the leash since. He didn't know if he'd dare to draw either of them again, given how quickly his pencil could turn a moment of weakness into a scandal that could stain the entire team.

And in this moment, Steve was finding himself very, very weak. Some quality time alone with his hand was definitely called for here, and the sooner the better.

He paused on his retreat only long enough to take an afghan from the back of the sofa and spread it gently across the pair. Neither twitched, even when he smoothed the tasseled yarn ends away from their sleeping cheeks so they wouldn't be tickled awake. They were definitely working too hard, he thought. Maybe he needed to ask Jarvis to be better about reminding them to get out of the lab and rest more... 

And then Steve stood upright, both eager and reluctant to go, and turned to find Thor watching, silent and still from the kitchen doorway.

Steve seized up, battle taut, the sudden charge of adrenaline neatly withering in seconds the erection he'd been trying to will away for hours. But Thor's face was soft with a fond smile, nothing in his eyes but blue, so Steve summoned up his game face, stood upright, and made a show of stretching his back before wandering over to join him in the kitchen. 

"They're both out cold," he murmured, slipping past Thor to get himself a drink from the fridge. "They must really need the sleep, to conk out in the common room like that. Hope you didn't want to use the TV set or anything."

Thor shrugged magnanimously as Steve handed him a beer. "It matters not. My chambers do not want for amusements. I came merely to be social." He turned another look toward the sofa, wistful and fond, and then shook his head. "Another night, I suppose," he said, and turned toward the elevator.

"Sure," Steve said, following as the light dimmed behind them. 

"Stay, you will not leave them, surely," Thor protested, one hand catching back Steve's elbow. "Would you not remain with them?"

Steve didn't flinch, even though something in his belly froze up hard at that. "Nah," he managed to say, glad the lights were low and his blush not _very_ fierce. "They're just fine. Don't need me hovering when they've got Jarvis to keep watch." Steve gave a hinting tug against Thor's grip.

"T'was not, I think, to _Jarvis'_ care that they committed themselves," he said, releasing Steve's arm after a long, searching stare. 

At a loss for what to say, Steve made for the elevator, but wasn't surprised when Thor followed. The gym was on Steve's level of the tower, and there was little else for a bored immortal to do at this hour of the night if he didn't care to go out into New York on his own. It took a considerable effort of will for Steve not to fidget under Thor's thoughtful, considering stare as they descended, but he thought he managed. Right up until the doors slid open and Thor caught his arm again, steering Steve toward the gymnasium instead of his own apartment. 

"Do they not yet know?" Thor waited to ask until the doors closed behind them, at least. "Have they not yet-"

"They can't remember anything," Steve answered, resigned. "The Doc says that can happen with drugs like those." 

"And you have not told them how it is with you? You have not yet told them how _you_ feel?"

"I've..." Steve looked away, a giddy twist tightening his belly. He'd known it would only be a matter of time before someone said something. He'd known he couldn't be quiet about it forever, not living in each other's pockets the way they all did. Sooner or later, someone was going to notice what he'd been wearing on his sleeve. Steve had privately suspected it would be Natasha who called his bluff, but after two months of anxious waiting, it was almost a relief to have someone drop the shoe at last. "I don't..." he took a breath, shook his head, and tried again. "They don't need to know about that." 

Thor's eyebrows went up, incredulous, and Steve felt his face go hot. "Don't," he said, cutting a hand bladewise through the air. "Thor, don't even suggest it. Tony and Bruce -- they love each other so much. Anyone can see that." 

"Aye," Thor answered with a slow nod, "T'is plain where their affections lie, though-"

"And after the break up with Pepper," Steve hurried on, hating the pleading note in his voice, but not quite daring to take the time to wring it out. "After finding out what happened to Miss Ross they just can't- They don't need-" 

He took a breath, forced himself to slow down, ignore the frantic charging of his idiot heart, and just make some _sense_. "Thor, Tony and Bruce need each other -- now more than ever, and they've both lost so, so much already. How could you think I'd ever interfere with what they've finally found now?"

Thor's answering smile was knowing and sad. "I have seen lovers enough to know this, Steven," he said, settling to a bench with a shake of his head. "The heart speaks with the tongue of a fool, and those who love are rarely so wise as they suppose. Fear not," he added when Steve's breath caught. "You have not been incautious or indiscreet. I merely know well the signs of Freya's wyrd when it lies heavy upon a man. Especially a man who does not feel free to own it."

_I'm not,_ Steve thought, an agonized sort of relief gushing through him, like a scab picked from sore skin to let the infection drain away. _I'm not free to own anything at all._ It hurt to hear his secret said out so very plainly, but a part of Steve was nothing but grateful to finally have it said.

"Such a weight lay upon _your_ face when Anthony kissed you that day," Thor went on, careful and calm. "And I have grown weary of watching you struggle to bear it alone."

Steve froze. Balls to bone, he locked up solid and brittle, transparent and cold. "You... you saw-" Then he clenched his eyes hard shut and shook his head. "No. You were in Asgard that day. You didn't respond to the emergency hail. The blast knocked out the cameras for three whole floors, and not even Jarvis -- you couldn't have seen what happened!" But he knew even as he protested that it was no good; Thor was many things, but not a liar. Speaking truth as he saw it was as much a matter of honor to him as it was to Steve himself. Thor wasn't guessing, he wasn't postulating; he knew – and he was gracious to take Steve's weak protestations for what they were, rather than as a challenge to the value of his word.

"When I learned of the matter, I looked backward," Thor explained as Steve sank to the bench beside him. "I ... felt it necessary to learn for myself what had befallen when I returned and saw the three of you so changed."

"Looked back..." Steve swallowed. "In time?" Something about that sounded funny, on a level of 'Bruce and Tony have probably explained to me already why this is impossible, but I was probably not listening at the time'.

Thor shrugged. "There are ways such things may be done on Asgard," he explained. "Light bends, time bends upon a long enough curve, and the distance between our worlds can suffice to see a little of what has gone before, if one finds the proper angle and knows just where to look. I was lucky; the moment was still just visible when I looked for it." Steve swallowed, and very carefully did not clench his fists, or look away from Thor's steady gaze. He could hear this. He could. 

But then Thor went on. "I saw you give ease to the Hulk, comfort to the Doctor afterward-" and suddenly Steve could _not_.

Thor caught his arm at once, stalled his shove to rise with godly force. "Peace, Steven, I wished only to know for myself that you were as well as you claimed," he murmured. Steve took a breath after a long moment, and then nodded, settling. "But in seeking that surety," Thor added, looking a tiny bit guilty now, "I also saw how the matter began."

"So you saw what I did..." it was only as he heard the whisper that Steve realized he'd been the one to speak. 

Thor's brows drew in. "I saw you brave the fire and poisoned smoke to pull Tony to safety," he said. "I saw the spell overtake him as you tended to his wounds, saw it turn him upon you, lust-maddened and reckless. And I saw you fight but little to stay him."

"I... Tony didn't know what he was doing," Steve said, hoping the excuses would sound less weak on his tongue than they had in his head these many weeks. "I didn't want to hurt him, but he wouldn't stop-" _kissing me, touching me, pressing against me and writhing till I thought I'd come in my pants like a guilty little kid..._

"Aye," Thor's chuckle was dark and wry. "Our friend knows armor well; armor of metal, of wit, of word, and of heart. He has, I find, a great talent for finding the chinks and slipping through."

Steve closed his eyes, breathed deeply. "I was trying to get him to medical."

"And he was trying to make love to you," Thor nodded. "And it was this which the good Doctor saw when he too ran to his lover's rescue, unknowing of the danger to himself. To you both."

It took so much more effort to quell the shiver, the twist in Steve's belly that memory evoked – the look in Bruce's eyes, already green with fright, when he emerged from the billowing smoke to see Tony on his knees, Steve not quite holding him back with shirt dragged askew, belt opened, pants straining; the noise he had made, helpless and wounded as the change swept over him; the Hulk's emerging _scream_. 

He drew a breath and forced it down. "I didn't know about the drug compound in the smoke," he said. "Jarvis was knocked out on that floor, and when Bruce wasn't with Tony in the lab, I thought... I didn't think to warn him... to tell him to stay out." That was very close to a lie. Steve hadn't _thought_ at all once Tony had come suddenly awake under his mouth and turned Steve's attempt at resuscitation into a whelming, starving kiss that had emptied Steve's brain and filled up his cock in three seconds flat.

"Dr. Banner did not share your gift of godly constitution," Thor said, startling Steve out of his lowering thoughts with a gentle hand on his elbow. "The miasma affected him as much as did his rage. More, perhaps." 

It was nothing Steve hadn't told himself before, willed himself to believe, in his better moments. Steve made himself nod to it now, but Thor was not convinced. "I must wonder though, did you mean it to be atonement for your crime, distracting the Hulk from Tony as you did?"

Steve flashed up, stung. "No. I. The Hulk needed someone to... I knew I could..." But even as the words rattled out of him, he knew they were hollow. He closed his eyes, took another breath, and forced the truth out between his teeth. "I... I don't know. Maybe."

The hand on his elbow tightened briefly. "And do you feel the lighter for that atonement? Is your silent conflict the better calmed now you have paid your weregild?"

Steve gave a slow headshake, the only reply he could muster.

"Then perhaps you should tell them what truly befell... and why."

Steve pushed away. "I can't."

"Your heart lies between them, Steven. Should they not know that they are treading upon it?"

He shook his head again, hard, trying to dislodge the traitorous voice that agreed. "Thor, they have both lost so, so much already," Steve tried to explain. "How could I take this wonderful thing they have finally found away from them just because I ...have a stupid little crush?" He shook his head again, trying to rattle the selfishness loose. "Sure, I'm jealous of what they have – it seems like a fine thing, loving your best friend and having him love you right back just the same way."

Now it was Thor's turn to look away. "Envy can be poisonous," he said, voice withered and weary and far, far away.

Steve straightened to the warning, squared his jaw, and shoved memories of his own past away. "Only if you're weak to it," he declared. "Only if you're selfish. Believe me, I know." Thor scowled, thinking, most likely, of Loki. Steve stared him down and let the truth of it stand without apology.

"I've been jealous most of my life," he said. "Jealous of the kids that got to know their fathers, got to grow up with their mothers; jealous of the kids who got new shoes and clothes nobody else had worn first, kids who could run and fight and play stick ball and _breathe_ ; jealous of the way Bucky could get any girl with just a grin and a rude comment; jealous of how any girl could get Bucky just by laughing at his corny jokes; jealous of all those men who enlisted first try, signed their names and went to their duty without having to plead and beg and _lie_ to make it happen." He stemmed the tide with effort, reminded himself he was talking about now, not then. "Jealousy's nothing new to me. I know my way around it."

"Perhaps," Thor mused, standing up at last, "you know it all too well if you find it more to your comfort than the love which your heart clearly craves."

Steve set his jaw against the flash of temper that evoked. He'd never taken well to anyone hinting he might be a coward, but he made himself remember that Thor, of everyone in the world, knew better. "Enough," he said. "I appreciate your concern – I do – but I won't interfere with Bruce and Tony any more than I already have done, and it isn't your business to change my mind. I respect you, Thor, but I don't need your approval to do what I know is right. Now can I trust you to keep this between us?"

For a moment, Thor was all Prince, offended honor rising in his face like rage. Steve didn't let himself flinch though – meddling couldn't make this better, no matter how well-intentioned. After a moment Thor's expression softened into regret and he sighed. "I give you my word, Captain," he said, "though it does not please me to do so."

"Me neither," Steve answered, turning go back to his own apartment, cold and dark across the hall. "But that's life, isn't it?"

"No, Steven," he heard, just seconds before the gym door closed. "That is disappointment. Life is much, much sweeter."


	10. Intuitive and resilient

It didn't take Steve long to figure out that the raid on Acidifer's hideout was a trap. Fury's intel was a little too good, their handler-approved plan of attack a little too convenient, a little too simple, a little too perfect. It looked like a milk run, something shiny and shallow and just for the cameras, and that set Steve's teeth right on edge. So when they arrived at the dockyards and began working their way toward the would-be villain's warehouse bunker without much more than the occasional show of mediocre resistance, Steve called a halt.

One fist raised at the elbow, the other hand tapping out the code that would drop his suit's cameras and mic out of the SHIELD feed, he stopped dead in the shadow of a massive crane and said, "Snipe hunt." 

"Do what now?" Tony answered from above, a crushed surveillance camera in his fist.

"Stealth mode, now," Steve ordered, and one by one the whispers of extra air dropped out of the network.

"What is a snipe?" Thor asked, perplexed.

"It's an ambush," Barton said over the sound of Natasha cursing in Russian. "And I'm betting we're already halfway into it."

Tony dropped to the ground behind Steve, covering his six with a whir of charging repulsors. "Well that explains the candyland resistance," he said. "So are we prey, or bait?"

Steve took a hard look about the dock yard, memorizing the angles, considering what might be hidden, considering what it might cost them to find out. "Both," he decided. Then he pointed at a salvage scow, its decks loaded with what looked like an oil tanker in pieces. "I got a feeling about that though. Iron Man, scan it. Hawkeye, get to that loader. I want it blocking the road ten feet in from the gates. Thor, get Black Widow over onto that gantry by the crane and find out what's under that tarp." Then he tapped one more line into the secure channel. "Dr. Banner, respond."

"I'm here, Cap," Bruce said, his voice hollow and nervous in the Quinjet's echoing belly. "I can get to you in two minutes. What do you want me to do?"

"Stay clear for now. You're our extraction plan if we set this off and can't handle it." He didn't point out that most likely, the trap centered on compromising the Hulk -- Bruce was genius enough to suss that all on his own. "And see what you can do to keep SHIELD's cameras -- everyone's cameras, I mean, out."

"That's it? Just wait on the bench while we play twenty questions?" Tony challenged, not yet moving from Steve's side. "Seriously?" 

"He'll know when to come in," Steve promised, staring hard at the salvage, and trying to remember why it seemed so damned familiar. "Your discretion, Doctor."

"Captain, I'm not sure..." he heard Bruce swallow, "I'd really feel more comfortable with a battle plan here, Captain."

"So would I," Steve said. "Iron Man, I need that scan-"

"Cap, I got something coming out of that tanker ," Hawkeye cut in before Steve had even run the odds in his head. "Make that a lot of somethings. That fly."

"That'll be your snipes," Natasha answered, kicking free of Thor's hold and landing on the gantry with a grunt. Then there came a flapping of canvas, and she was swearing again. "God damn it, Stark!"

"Widow, report!" Steve barked, jogging toward the gantry.

"When you break all your toys, you should damn well clean them up afterward!" Natasha snarled

"This is an armory," Thor said, perplexed. "How could the villain have come by such-" 

And that was when Tony, cursing like a sailor, blazed past Steve's shoulder at full speed. And _that_ was when he remembered where he'd seen that tanker before: DC harbor on a fiery night, with the President dangling from chains above it in a suit of armor that Tony had designed. And that went a far way toward explaining where this Acidifer clown's fancy machines had been coming from too, damn it.

"New plan, Avengers," he called, unslinging his shield as a cloud of flying machines swarmed from the wreckage, and a hell of a lot more armed guards than SHIELD had told them to expect came pounding out with guns blazing. "Attack!"

~*~

"Iron Man, can you do something about those drones?" Steve shouted over the ringing hail of gunfire against his shield. On the lea side of the burning salvage scow, across a hundred-yard no-man's land of downed bodies, ruptured crates of half-burned armor, and hovering gun-drones, he could see a helicopter's rotors turning up to speed. "Acidifer's making a break!"

"Not with my armor, he's not," Tony growled, the sound strangely twinned between the comm in Steve's helmet and the unmodified voice echoing in the baffle of shipping containers behind him. But the drones didn't stop firing, and the whir of the villain's chopper was getting louder by the second.

"Hawkeye, Widow, we need to keep that chopper on the ground. Either of you got the shot?" Steve called, already knowing their answer. 

"Negative, Captain," Barton came back. "Widow's still woozy from that dart she took, and I got nothing that can get through that energy field of his."

"How's Thor?"

"He'shhhtoned," Natasha slurred. "Acid'fr. I...tracer..."

"He'll find it and disable it before we can get a lock," Tony snarled. "So help me, I will go out there and drag his ass back myself before I'll-"

"Negative," Steve said, picking off one of the drones with the last rounds in his stolen pistol, and then flinging the gun like a boomerang to smash another out of the air. "That pulse beam of his knocked you out of the sky once already. Last thing we need's to give him or HYDRA _another_ one of your suits."

And Steve could hear Tony winding up to scrap over the order, could _feel_ the genius bristling, puffing up, spinning his fear, his frustration, and his bruised pride into a pointless wrangle. But then suddenly, the Hulk was there, leaping through the chaos with a roar that shook the ground.

"Thank God," Steve murmured as the stacked shipping containers around them to jitterred and creaked. Steve shoved out of cover long enough to spot the Hulk flinging himself aloft to snatch gun-drones from the air and spike them to the ground. "HULK!" He shouted, pointing after the fleeing helicopter as it swung out over the harbor, "Catch him! Don't let him get away!"

"He's got my goddamned suit!" Tony shouted over the comm as Hulk turned at once and bounded into the sky.

"Drones!" Steve reminded Tony, ducking back into cover as bullets rattled and pinged around him. "Acidifer's no good to us dead, and HYDRA will put a round in his skull rather than let us take him – LOOK OUT!" Steve flung his shield and himself at once, bouncing vibranium off rusted steel to pick off a drone that had crept stealthily into their hold-out and was now taking aim at the one man who stood a chance at bringing them all down. Aiming at Tony, who was still dazed from his fall, still mired in compromised armor that wouldn't move properly on its own, still helpless, still fighting.

He yelped when Steve tackled him to the wall, then again when the shield struck, and the drone spiraled to the ground, its wildly firing gun filling the steep metal canyon with ricochet. Steve shoved Tony's head down against his chest, tensed up tight against the searing pain he knew, just _knew_ was coming... but it never did.

"-off me, dammit, Cap, what the fuck!" Tony was squirming, cussing against Steve's chest as the last pinging echoes died around them. He shoved with clumsy, armored hands, spitting mad once Steve sat back and released him. "You asshole! What the hell were you thinking? My armor could-" 

"Not with your helmet in the corner," Steve answered, standing to retrieve his shield. "I need you to stop these gun drones before-" He jumped and whirled, on high alert as the downed drone buzzed behind him, sheared nearly in two, but still trying to fly. 

"It's still active!" Tony shouted, their argument forgotten as he scrambled to remove his gauntlets. "Gimmie!" 

Steve sighed, but did so, taking a moment to crimp the thing's gun barrel under his boot before dropping it into Tony's grabby hands. "You gonna be able to crack it?" he asked, turning reluctantly away from those long, clever fingers to scan the sky against more sneak attacks. 

"The odds just got a lot better," Tony allowed. 

"Cap, the Hulk just caught Acidifer's ride," Clint spoke up over the comm. "Looks like he's got him stuffed into his armpit, and is bringing him to you. Hope you got some cuffs ready." 

"Roger that," Steve answered, thumbing open one of his belt pouches. "Tell me Thor's shaking it off -- we need less gunfire around here." 

"He's awake, yeah, but I wouldn't trust him with a hammer right now," came the answer. "Also, Widow's out for the count. Whatever's in those darts, it is not fucking around – Hold up, something's..." 

And in fact, something was. Something definitely was, and for the first time all day, it was actually in their favor. 

All over the dockyard, the airborn drones began sparking, spinning, and falling from the sky like maple keys in the wind. Over the comm, Clint whooped, and behind him Tony shamelessly echoed the sentiment. Too relieved to scold them for the chatter, Steve leaned against the bullet-scarred shipping container and grinned upward at the impromptu fireworks display. 

Then the Hulk came bounding into view with his face spread in a ferocious grin, and the architect of all the chaos dangling from his grip like a squirming rag doll in an acid green cape. Hulk fixed on Steve immediately, as if he'd known exactly where, in all the chaos to look. He gave a bellow that made Steve's heart race before he could choke the burst of panic away. Then in one exuberant leap, the Hulk crashed down into the mouth of their shelter; massive, looming, blocking all possible escape, growling deep and feral in his massive chest as he pushed upright from his deep landing crouch. 

_Stop it,_ Steve told himself, and set his shield down against the wall. _Stop being an idiot!_

"Hulk catch," the giant rumbled, slinging Acidifer at Steve's feet like an enormous dog offering up a cherished stick for another throw. He looked so innocently hopeful, Steve couldn't help smiling back. 

"Good job," Steve said, and presented a fist, knuckles outward like a frozen punch. 

The Hulk's grin spread like morning as he raised his own massive fist and gently bumped it against Steve's. "Hulk good," he repeated in a tone that could only be called proud. 

"Darn straight," Steve said, for the benefit of all those who'd doubted him, doubted the Hulk, doubted his team's ability to hold together under internal pressure. Then he knelt and slipped the cuffs on the groaning, groggy prisoner who was currently trying not to puke all over the Hulk's feet. 

"Hey, where's _my_ victory dance?" Tony called from behind them, his suit's half-fried servos whining as he tried to get his feet under him. "Tony good too! Cause you may not realize it just yet, but that was one hell of a hardware hack I just pulled off there. Jarvis offline! No keyboard! Possible concussion! Tony _good_!" 

Steve laughed, plucked Acidifer's control wand from the front of his coveralls, and went to help. "Sure, Iron Man" he said, squatting down deep to work one arm under Tony's armored shoulders, "I don't have any gold stars or cookies on me right now, but there might be half a power bar in my utility belt –" 

Something whirred, jittered against concrete and steel, and Steve had a moment's perfect, sinking clarity; Acidifer's control module in his hand; the cracked pieces of attack drone between Tony's feet; the manic look on the face of every HYDRA agent he'd ever captured, just before they'd cracked their teeth together on a cyanide pill and died in a jerking, toxic froth. 

Then the darts hit him, a peppering scatter of wasp-stings from knee to crown; six, eight, a hundred of them stabbing, hair-needle fine through Kevlar mesh and plating seams to prick him with ice and ants and spreading stone. Some pinged off Tony's armor. Steve heard them clattering to the floor as he sagged, bones going to water, muscles to ash, and how the hell could that stuff be working so damned quick? He didn't even feel it when he bounced his head off the concrete beside Tony's knee. 

"Cap? Steve!" Tony sounded a thousand miles underwater. "Fuck!" 

And then the towering walls of steel around them tottered apart with a crash, and the Hulk was there. His feet were covered with brick dust and sea water, a spray of avgas that looked like scarlet blood down his shin. A series of rotor-slashes fanned open the remains of Bruce's trousers like delicate, old-fashioned cutwork. 

_I'm sorry,_ Steve couldn't say as the Hulk's enormous hands snatched him off the ground and held him, lolling limp, up to the light. _It's all right. I'm fine. The serum. Don't be afraid. I'll be fine. I'll be fine._

But the drone whirred and chattered and fired another round, and the Hulk roared and leapt for the open air, leaving Tony shouting and cursing below. As the world tunneled down to throbbing grey with each laboring heartbeat, Steve didn't know exactly whom he was trying to reassure. 


	11. Commiserate and ascetic

"Barton!" Tony called, dropping onto his landing pad with a rattle and clang. "Where the fuck are you?"

"Welcome back, Sir," Jarvis put in smoothly as the removal bots arched up out of their bays, reaching for his armor. "Agent Barton is with the Captain and-"

"About time you fucking got here Stark!" Barton cut in over the team comm, his voice all edges and elbows. "Will you get in here and talk your boyfriend down please?" The microphone picked up the unmistakable rumble of the Hulk's 'back the hell out of my big green face' growl, and Clint's voice went up a note or two. "Look, I told you man, I'm not gonna take him anywhere. Will you just let me loosen his collar? Take his cowl off? Maybe check if he's still breathing? Please?"

"What do you mean Cap's not breathing?" Tony yelped as the removal bot struggled with his left repulsor boot. He yanked his foot clear and hissed at the twinge. "Jarvis, scan him right now!"

"The Captain _is_ breathing, Sir," the AI answered at once, all soothing competence. "His blood pressure is quite low, and his heart rate and respiration are considerably slowed from their normal state, but they have remained constant since Dr. Banner returned him to the tower."

"Yeah, well if _Dr. Banner_ had returned Cap to the tower, I wouldn't be quite so worried," Clint peeved back. "The Hulk isn't as easy to reason with though. I can still see half a dozen of those fucking darts stuck in Cap's clothes, and I really need to-" Another roar cut him off, peaking the suit's speakers until the removal bots plucked the helmet free.

"You need to get your ass back to SHIELD is what," Tony announced as the removal bots finally, _finally_ got the pauldron assembly and spine guard separated, and the rest of the armor slipped away. "Barton, you're the only one of us fit to debrief right now, and Thor and Natasha are gonna need a ride once Medical gets done poking at them." Tony headed inside, and up the stairs that led to the bedroom level.

Barton came barreling down them to meet him halfway. "Wait, you left them there?" he demanded. "What the fuck?"

Tony rolled his eyes. "The suit doesn't exactly come with a sidecar," he shot back, then flinched and flailed for balance as Barton crowded close and grabbed his chin with uncompromising fingers. "Ow! Get off!"

Ignoring his protests, Barton scowled and turned Tony's face to the light. "You are fucking concussed!" he griped. "Wonderful! How the hell am _I_ the only one not injured today?"

"You want the statistics or a blow by blow recap?" Tony answered, finally managing to jerk loose without falling on his ass -- which, on the stairs, was actually something of a concern. "Or you maybe want me to get in there and fucking _handle this_ before Steve loses another seventy years to nappage?"

He shoved by, sore and sweating and doing his best not to show just how badly the idea of Steve laid low bothered him. "Get lost, Hawkeye. I'll call if we need someone."

"Be careful, Stark," Barton said, and a strange note of warning in his voice called Tony to halt and turn back. "Cap's... he fronts solid, but he's hurting pretty bad, and..." he looked back up the stairs for a long moment, then sighed. "Just don't make it worse, okay?" he finally said. Then he turned and pelted down the stairs without another glance.

"Thought you said Cap was unconscious, J," Tony mused as on the landing deck, the Quinjet began to roar. "How the hell can he be hurting if he's drugged out?"

"I am unable to diagnose that with certainty, Sir," Jarvis replied, pointedly lighting the stairs ahead of Tony. "I believe you might be better qualified to make that determination in person."

Alarm renewed, Tony dragged himself up the stairs, following Jarvis' lighting pointers straight back to the master bedroom. There, evidence of the Hulk's involvement finally presented itself in the door and its frame, along with a good chunk of the surrounding wall having been ripped out to allow the big guy passage. Which was kind of a bitch, because Tony had liked that door a lot – it had been reinforced just so, with strategic hard points for anchorage... also, totally soundproofed.

Oh well.

The lights inside the bedroom were low, the windows opaqued and dimmed so that the panorama of the bustling city seemed far, far away. In the center of the room, in a welter of blankets, pillows, and collapsed bedframe, sat the Hulk with Captain America cradled helpless as a kitten in his arms. The Captain's eyes were eerily open, as blank and as glassy as a doll's, and if not for Jarvis' earlier assurances that Steve _was_ still breathing on his own, Tony would have lost his shit at the sight.

Instead, he took a breath and dragged his attention up to the Hulk, who was watching from the side of his eyes like a dog ready to huddle his favorite bone out of sight. But he was quiet, if you ignored the low, constant growl, and as calm as the Hulk ever really got -- sitting rather than crouched to spring, and his hands held open rather than knotted into fists. On any other day, Tony would have given it a matter of a minute or less before green and surly would be giving way to pink and sleepy. But this was today, and he just didn't feel that lucky.

"Hey buddy," Tony murmured, stepping carefully over the debris on the floor. The Hulk's head whipped up to face him square, teeth bared in a snarl. Tony raised both his palms hastily, but kept easing into the room. "It's just me. I heard Cap wasn't doing too good," he continued as the Hulk's clutch relaxed a bit. "Thought I'd come see if I could help you with him."

Hulk squinted at him for a moment, then huffed and raised up the arm he had curled under Steve's spine, offering. Steve's head lolled and his arms dangled, and Tony had to swallow hard not to imagine him dead. "Hurts," Hulk grunted, plaintive and confused. Then he stroked his other hand over Steve's breast, blotting out the white star and half of his uniform with a caress that looked as dangerous as it was delicate. "Hurts. Bad."

"Not because of you, buddy," Tony hurried to say, closing the last few feet to the bed with a grateful rush and taking up Steve's hand to strip the glove away. One of the darts clattered to the floor, its plastic fletching a mocking acid green until Tony pointedly crushed it underfoot. Steve's hand was limp, cool and sweaty underneath, but Tony reeled with relief to feel the sleepy surge of blood under the skin.

"Cap was just fighting," he explained, gently peeling off Steve's other glove. "He was fighting, and the bad guys made him... tired." Tony spotted three more of the green fletches in the uniform's creases and plucked them free with a grimace. "You know how you get tired after you fight?" he said, dropping the darts into an abandoned highball glass on the nightstand. Bruce would want the trace later. "You always want to go to sleep after a good scrap, don't you?"

"No!" Hulk clutched Cap close to his chest again, and Tony had to grab the massive green arm for balance. "No change! Keep!"

Tony held still, head reeling, doing his best to think like a giant green rage monster, and coming up pretty blank. "You... don't think Cap's gonna change, do you?" he tried.

That won a headshake, a frustrated huff, and an easing of his grip that had Steve slithering alarmingly down the Hulk's side. Tony lunged to steady him, but found himself knocked on his ass in the pillows when the Hulk flipped Steve over and slung him across both their laps – his chest cradled by the Hulk's crossed ankles, his legs flopped over Tony's. They weighed a fucking _ton_ , but Tony figured it was as good a chance as he was going to get to take Steve's boots off, so he didn't complain. 

Hulk watched him work for a moment. Then, when Tony tossed the second boot away, he nudged Tony's shoulder gently and said, "Keep. Safe."

"Keep... Cap safe?" Tony wondered, and began working open the uniform's catches. "Safe as you?" The blue jacket fell open, and when the Hulk nodded, Tony leaned over to see what he could do about getting Steve's cowl off. "Well I do my best, but nobody keeps 'em safer than you, big green YIE-"

A hand curled around the back of his head. A part of his brain _knew_ it was the Hulk pressing him down, ear-first to Steve's chest; _knew_ he wasn't really in any danger at all... but memory surged up hard into his brain, filled the gloom with ozone and rust and curses, blood and sepsis and water in his throat, and for a moment he was gone, thrashing, fighting for breath, losing... losing everything.

Then the solid, unhurried thud of Steve's heart beneath his ear made it through the screaming clamor; the rhythm winding through, overtaking his panic with measured, unstoppable calm, as though it was Steve's voice in his ear, whispering over and over again, _I'm here. I'm here. I'm here._ Tony sobbed a breath, thick with sweat and musk but sweetly desperate as his lungs finally remembered what air was for. He let his arms slip down, no longer shoving away from Steve's broad chest, but clinging instead, holding tight to the steady rock that always forgave how panic made him shake, how fear made him stupid, how doubt made him mean. 

The Hulk's hand on Tony's neck felt suddenly solid, steadying instead of brutal and cruel, and Tony could feel his massive thumb gently brushing back and forth, stirring the hair at his temple. "Keep safe," Tony whispered, blinking his wet eyes open at last. "Yes. Okay. Very safe. That's good."

The answering grunt he got was impatient, but also a little bit amused, a resounding _well finally_ curling unspoken through the sound. Tony just huffed back at him, snuggled into Steve's slightly-damped basking heat, and told himself that his head hurt too much for sarcasm. This was apparently the right answer, because in a quick seismic shift, the Hulk lay himself down and curled them both into his chest, Steve's shoulders pillowed on one great green arm, the other hand petting Tony's back with long, careful strokes.

"It's not fair," Tony muttered, toeing off his shoes and kicking them off the bed so he could properly feel the tangle their feet made. "Bruce ratted me out. The cuddling thing's supposed to be our secret."

"Shh," was his only answer.

~*~

"Sir," Jarvis' voice slipped into the lulling cadence sometime later. "I have a call from SHIELD."

"Seriously?" Tony whined. "Now?"

"It's from the medical department," Jarvis answered, bringing the lights up so Tony had no choice but to squint them out, or else disentangle his arm and hide under it. "They have questions regarding the Captain's condition which I am unable to answer."

Tony sighed and picked up his head a little, pleased to find that the weight against his neck didn't press him back down again. Bruce was dozing beside them now, his arm still thrown over Tony's back, and to Tony's relief, Steve had managed to properly close his eyes. "Okay," he murmured, scrubbing at his face. "What questions?"

The line clicked to live air in answer and Natasha's annoyed voice filled the room. "Oh for fuck's sake, give that to me. Stark, you need to strip Cap and count puncture wounds so they can fix a dosage for the counteragent."

"They have a counteragent already?" Tony blinked, sitting up. "Jarvis, how long was I out?"

"Twenty minutes, sir," Jarvis replied. "And I believe the drug in question is not uncommon, barring in the dosage administered. I have been updating the doctors regarding the Captain's bio data readings and they-"

"Horse tranquilizers," Natasha growled. "And in case you're wondering, they _itch_ when they wear off, and that's making me very cranky. Now how many times was he _shot_ , Stark?"

"Ummm..." he looked down at Steve's lax, rumpled glory and felt a strange mix of guilty, titillated, and intimidated. Then he took a deep breath and got the fuck over himself. "Dunno yet," he said, sitting up and unbuckling Steve's utility belt with sleep-clumsy hands. "I'll have to call you back."

Jarvis, brilliant thing that he was, cut the call then, and brought up the lights just enough to let Tony work his way steadily through the clasps still holding Steve's costume on him. He'd managed about half of them when Bruce finally snuffled awake, staring blearily through tangled curls to mumble "Mphdoing?"

"Taking Steve's clothes off," Tony answered, yanking on a sleeve that couldn't possibly be long enough for the arm that was stuck inside it. "Because of reasons. Gimmie a hand?"

Bruce was dopey enough to do so without further complaint, grabbing when told to grab, tugging when told to tug, and between the two of them, they had Steve down to his shorts in only a few minutes. "Jarvis, you know what to look for here, or do I actually have to count?" Tony asked as he wadded up the uniform trousers and threw them toward the door.

"What are we counting?" Bruce asked, leaning into Tony's side with a sigh. "Steve's got the perfect number of everything." Tony patted him on the head and let him cuddle without complaint – he was right, after all.

"I am scanning visible areas for puncture wounds," Jarvis answered, "but perhaps a manual examination might be called for here? For corroboration?"

"Puncture wounds?" Bruce starched up at that, his eyes going sharp in a flash as he watched Tony trace four small pink welts along the left side of Steve's ribs. "What? What happened to him?"

"Those," Tony nodded at the green-fletched darts in the highball glass and grabbed one of Steve's arms. "Help me turn him over, will ya?"

"The active agent appears to be a variant of romifidine," Jarvis supplied as they did so. "I suspect it is primarily due to the Captain's serum-enhanced constitution that he escaped a fatal dose."

"Yeah," Tony sighed, counting up another eight welts that ran in a wandering line down to the soft pit of his knee, "I got a total of twelve on him, Jarvis. No... make that thirteen."

"My count is the same, sir. Relaying to SHEILD medical now."

Tony shifted, eased down along Steve's side to prop his head on one hand so he could rest the other over Steve's ribs. "All the other drones were firing one dart at a time out there," he said, spreading his fingers against the steady flex of Steve's breathing. "I think Thor got hit from three different drones before he finally stayed down, but that last one let loose with everything it had."

Bruce leaned close to peer at the wounds, softly tracing each one and frowning at the bruising he found there. "Did they know it was him?" he asked after a moment. "Or were they after me?"

Tony shook his head. "Or were they after Acidifer? And does it really matter either way? You know Steve wouldn't think twice about taking a bullet for any of us, but that isn't what happened today. We've got him home, Bruce. Even if Steve's serum did let him down, we've got him, SHIELD's got him. He'll be fine."

"I'm actually getting really tired of hearing that," Bruce sighed, reaching for a blanket and slinging it over Tony and Steve. "He'll be fine. That's all anybody says about him; 'he'll be fine,' like it's some inevitable future state that everyone knows will come over Steve, no matter what's happened to him." He twitched a wrinkle from the blanket with brisk, angry hands. "Drumroll, spotlight, fanfare, and look – it's Captain America, and he's _Fine_."

Tony bit his lip and looked down. There was a fluff of lint in the long sweep of lashes fanning across Steve's cheek, and he brushed it free with a careful touch. Steve didn't twitch. "Some guys don't like a fuss," he started.

Bruce cut him off, laying a heavy hand over his own where it lay beneath the blanket. "Some guys don't seem to know what being _fine_ actually feels like," he growled. "And since when is _fine_ good enough, anyway? Can we at least agree that Steve Rogers deserves better than a stingy little 'fine' out of life after everything he's been through? After everything he's done, all he _keeps on_ doing, in spite of all the garbage the world keeps throwing at him? How can we all sit here and keep telling ourselves that this one-day-maybe fine is all he's worth?"

"Bruce..." Tony turned his hand, then grumbled as the blanket's interference made lacing their fingers together impossible. "Look, I hear you, and I agree..."

"But?" Bruce prompted into Tony's hesitation, his voice leaden as he pulled his hand away.

"No 'but'," Tony promised, lifting the blanket away from Steve's chest. "No 'or' either. I was...I was thinking of a different conjunction altogether."

For a moment, he thought Bruce was going to ignore the invitation, or misunderstand it. Then when Bruce's cheeks darkened with a flush, Tony worried that he'd read the whole thing wrong, and would be making an accounting to the Hulk in a few seconds. But then Bruce's stiff posture melted a little, and by degrees, he let himself draw into the offered shelter and settle down along Steve's other side. "Tell me what this is," he said, voice shaking just enough to make the demand sound a lot like a plea as Tony twitched the blanket out to cover him. "Tell me exactly."

He didn't resist when Tony sought out his hand and drew it up to rest with his own against Steve's back, just above his still-marching heart. And he didn't tug away when Tony ducked under the blanket to press a kiss to the chilled, stiff fingers, but he didn't relax, and the wariness didn't fade from his eyes. And even though he couldn't even begin to calculate the odds, the cost, or the consequences, Tony knew what he had to do.

"Can I show you instead?" he asked, and won a single, cautious nod by way of reply.

"Jarvis, projection mode," Tony ordered, and rolled over to watch the bedroom ceiling fill with blue and green light. "Now don't say anything," he said to Bruce, reaching with his free hand to call up the files he wanted, "Not until you've seen them all, okay?"

With nod, this one strangely less wary, Bruce settled back to watch, his hand still laced with Tony's, still cradled against Steve's back. Tony took that for the best sign he could ask for, really. 

He set the folder of Steve's drawings to slide show mode, and pressed play.


	12. Vulnerable and generous

"...not for all the wealth of Midgard remove him, nor suffer another to try. Let him rest where he is. I can imagine no better place." The words were a distant, low rumble, like a storm moved out harmlessly to sea.

"How about a place where the bed's in one piece?" That voice had an edge to it, scarlet and bright.

"No doubt he has slept in harsher places."

"He should be seen by a doctor."

The warmth beneath his cheek shifted, vibrant with sarcasm. "Oh look; there's a doctor's right here. How convenient."

"Stark..."

"Nat." A lower, weightier heat, muzzy and soft against his back. He thought of hazel green as the words curled over his neck. "Steve's staying here."

A long silence, dense with a million silent words. Someone with cool hands smoothed his hair twice. "You two have no idea," Natasha. That was Natasha's voice, a silk-fine tremor sliding between her words. "No idea at all."

"Nay," That was Thor. He felt the resonance of the word in his ribs, in his spine, in the space beneath his heart. "They have the right of it; we could trust our shield brother's safety to none better in all this world."

A sigh. Air whirled a turning gust. Steps, near-silent, retreated, a heavier tread aligning in step. "You are so sentimental."

"Thank you."

"Stop scratching that, you'll make it worse."

"No."

The bickering faded into heartbeats as he waited, but there were no more close words, nothing but whispering breath in the swimming slide of his dreaming. He forgot, and knew himself forgetting, even as the tide carried him out again.

~*~

"...vorite one, right there. We should really try that one."

A laugh. He felt it flex against his arm. "Don't think I stretch like that."

Rough fingers slid through his hair and the scalp tingled, warm as if they'd done so many times already. "Point. Still gorgeous though."

"Not sure I get it, actually. What's going on there? Under the-"

"Foot. Leg. Arm over here. You can't see the other one because it's under my ass." Fabric slid cool/warm against his chest. The fingers stalled. "What? Okay, yeah he didn't draw himself in, exactly, but he never does. Look at this one. And this one here, see?"

"He just... leaves the space where he..."

The fingers slid again. "Belongs. Yeah."

A soft sound, moist and intimate. The fingers in his hair flexed and curled against his scalp, kneading. Then a gentle weight settled on his shoulder, curls tumbling against his skin, and he realized he couldn't move, because he would have shivered to his bones if he could.

"Yeah."

And this was important. He knew it was important, that he needed to listen, to remember, to understand why the words made his breath ache, why it seemed so very vital that he manage to open his hand, lift his arm, reach... but the darkness was a thick, velvet thing without mercy. When it rolled over him again it swept everything else into warm silence before it.

~*~

_Grab my hand!_

_...eep breathin', you dumb punk. You just keep breathin, you hear me?_

_... show you how, just be there..._

_... I'm followin' him..._

_... special about you came out of a bottle..._

_Buy another round._

_...ing the party to you!_

_That's my secret, Captain; I'm always..._

_Breathe! Damn it, Tony breathe for me!_

_I know just where to put it..._

_Not like this, you bastard. You do not die like this! Take a breath, damn you!_

_Grab my hand!_

_Breathe!_

_Grab my-_

_Breathe, you-_

Steve came awake the third time completely, and all at once; heart pounding, arms and legs tangled in bedding, breath snagged on a yell in his throat as if someone had dropped him into his skin from several yards up. 

Dark room, but it didn't feel like night time. Bed underneath him, soft but lumpy, a deep sag in the middle, where the springs had gone. Steve drew a slow breath that stretched his sore ribs as it filled his nose with data; the faint smells of soap, sleep, Scotch and sweat tinted the gloom, along with a bizarre tinge of copper and coconut that was familiar, yet baffling at once. The nightmare ghost of vanished time, lost place, and strange awakenings loomed up behind him again, whispering like ice down his spine, _'Where am I, really?'_

"Shhh." The voice was muzzy with sleep and smelled of morning, and it stirred Steve's ear with a resonant warmth. "Shhh. Breathe, Steve. Just breathe." A broad, callused hand slipped over his side from behind, nudging between Steve's arm and his ribs to light on his sternum, where it rubbed small, firm circles that made the command impossible to ignore. "You're home now. You're ok."

"Bucky?" It was out of his mouth before Steve could stop it, leaking out, pathetic and hopeful on the last tangle of his dream. Stupid, he winced. He knew better than that. He started to turn, apology on his lips, but the hand on his chest pressed flat, stilling him.

"Sorry buddy," Tony answered, lifting himself up onto one elbow so Steve could see him, rumpled, bruised, and smiling wearily in the gloom. "It's just me. How's the back feel?" he asked, his palm still pressed to Steve's chest as if to anchor him against panic or pain.

"Hot," Steve winced as the sheets slid over his skin like a tickle of silk. "Itchy. Aches a little. Am... am I naked?"

"Kinda," Tony managed to answer without leering. Almost.

Steve narrowed his eyes, aware, suddenly, that Tony's legs were pressed up against the back of his thighs, knees tucked in close, feet entangled where they'd been spooning moments before. He could feel the curve of Tony's hip against his bare ass now, and his cock gave a painfully eager lurch at the realization. "Am I kinda naked in _your_ bed?"

"Shh," Tony warned with a meaning glance at the pillows to Steve's right, where Bruce's shaggy hair barely peeked out of the tangled nest he'd made of the blankets. "Don't wake him. He only got to sleep a few hours ago."

"But I'm in your bed," Steve whispered, clinging to the point, and shamefully, to the press of Tony's skin along his back, the weight of his hand over his heart. He'd move away in a minute, he promised himself, just as soon as he'd got himself together a bit.

"You remember going after Acidifer?" Tony asked, almost silent as he settled down again, his shoulders curled close over Steve's, and his lips brushing the curve of his neck. "The dock? The drones?"

Steve nodded, not quite trusting his voice. Tony's beard scratched lightly as he nodded too. "Well, the Hulk has a limited understanding of what 'safe place' means," he said, voice low and fond. "And he really wasn't down with the idea of letting anybody take you to SHIELD Medical. Treating you here was the best compromise we could come to." Tony chuckled, and Steve felt it all the way to his balls. "You've been here with us for the last ten hours or so, sleeping it off, and I gotta say, Cap; you are one hell of a bed warmer!"

Steve winced, feeling his face flush with heat as vague impressions filtered through the drug-haze. He'd had flashes of awareness; remembered being paralyzed, able only to breathe, and that requiring nearly all his focus to achieve as the world blurred, slid, and melted around him. No outlet for his panic, no voice to his terror in the flickers of knowing the serum had allowed him. But also, Steve remembered a feeling of rocking, big, big hands cradling him close, a sleepy weight on his chest, arms wound around his sides, a crude, thick voice murmuring 'keepsake', or 'cheesesteak'. Something about pictures, too... 

"The team?" he made himself ask, shoving down his mortification and dragging his mind back to the point.

Tony chuckled, and his hand resumed its maddening circles. "Tasha and Thor are grumpy, itchy, and cleaning us out of ice cream downstairs. Barton's smug about being the only one not injured on this run, and I'm flying a mild concussion _not_ -" he pressed on Steve's chest, aborting his attempt to roll back in alarm, "not anything you need to worry about. Jarvis is monitoring my stats, and he'll bust me in a hot second if I try and overstep myself."

"And you'll ignore him, too," Steve grumbled, fidgeting subtly in the hope that his growing erection would subside before Tony noticed it and began to tease. He really would have to get some distance soon. "What about Bruce? The Hulk?" he asked instead, and shivered as he _felt_ Tony's proud smile against his nape.

"He did great, Steve. Saved the day twice over, catching Acidifer and bringing you home safe." And Steve felt his heart stagger, like it hadn't done for years, because that... that had been a kiss. A quick, deliberate press of lips against his neck, just where his hair was even now standing on end, and dear God but his traitorous cock knew it.

He took a breath, fiercely clenched down on the urge to tremble, and caught Tony's hand away from his chest. "I should go back to my own-"

"Nope," Tony cut him off, tugging loose of his grip, and bumping his hips pointedly against Steve's rear as if to shove him onto his belly. "What you should do, oh my Captain, is push over and let me check out your back. Nat and Thor both had a reaction to the drug, and the docs told me I had to watch you for hives since you got like six times the dose either of them did."

"Tony," Steve swallowed, steadfastly ignoring the hinting nudge. "The serum fixed all my allergies. I'm sure I'll be-"

"Serum's also supposed to keep you from going down from toxins," Tony insisted, shoving with his hips again, though he couldn't be unaware of what it was doing to Steve's barely-restrained horniness. He wasn't that naive. He _had_ to know. "So I think it's safe to say we're outside normal parameters here. Just roll over and let me check out that fine ass of yours, okay?" And he dug at the back of Steve's thigh with one knee.

"Tony..." Steve growled, moving only so far as to bury his burning face in the pillow. That only filled his head with the smell of them though, sleepy and warm and soft, and so, _so_ not helpful.

"Steve," It was Bruce's voice that answered then, low and rough with warning, Bruce's fingers that caught his shoulder and quelled his flinch, Bruce who tugged him forward while Tony pushed. "Let him look at you."

His eyes, when Steve glanced up, held such patient softness, such a sleepy heat waiting like banked coals underneath, that Steve couldn't do anything else but nod and yield to the combined weight of their insistence. He rolled onto his belly, biting back a hiss as his cock pressed damply into the sheets. He couldn't quell the delicious shudder that coursed up the length of his spine when Tony whisked off the top sheet and swung astride Steve's thighs without missing a beat though, because the move made it obvious that Tony wasn't wearing shorts either. Steve bound the pillow tight between his fists and told himself not to notice.

"Jarvis, lights. 25% ambient, but give me one spot here on Cap's whew..." Tony's voice trailed off in a whistle. "You sure that doesn't hurt?" he asked, brushing a touch, maddeningly gentle, over the swell of Steve's ass, and up the length of his side. "Cause you don't have a rash, but that bruising's something else."

Biting back a whimper, Steve shook his head and tried to rock his hips just a little, just to find a better angle, just to relieve a little pressure on his tortured cock. Beside him, Steve heard Bruce snort. "I don't think Steve's definition of 'hurt' is the same as yours, Tony," he said, shoving blankets out of the way and curling up against Steve's side to look as well. Steve shivered to feel the doctor's gentle, confident touch along the slope of his ribs. "Me, I'd say he could use some more of that cream."

"Yep," Tony chirruped, tightening his knees on Steve's hips so he could stretch out sidelong and rummage in the night table drawer. The move pressed Tony's half-hard cock and balls into the join of Steve's ass and thighs -- he couldn't keep back the whimper this time, so he did his best to smother it in the pillow.

"Hey," he felt Bruce lean near, felt the soft prickle of body hair against his ribs, his hip, his tight-bunched arm, felt the gentle press of lips against his ear, whispering, "Steve, you okay?"

"M'fine," he groaned as Tony levered himself upright again. Then he swallowed, took a breath, and lifted his face to make a better go of it. "It's fine. I'm-"

"Stop that!" Bruce grabbed his face with fingers that were anything but gentle now. "Stop _lying_!" Steve blinked, denial unraveling on his tongue as the angry, anguished look in Bruce's eyes cut through him, pinned him in place, made him thin, small, and cold all over again. "You don't have to," Bruce said, fingers gentling just _so_ much, eyes dipping to watch as Steve nervously licked his lips. "I already know."

"You-" Steve's stomach turned over in shame. Of course he knew. Bruce was a genius. Smarter even than Tony, and Steve never had been smooth about anything. He closed his eyes, would have hidden his face in the pillow again, if pride had allowed. "I'd," he swallowed, tried again. "I swear, Bruce, I wouldn't-"

"Wouldn't you?" Bruce asked, his thumb shifting to catch, briefly, on Steve's lip, his eyes following, rapt and hungry. "Because I would. I would in a second, Steve."

Wordless, buzzing in his skin with shame and shock and a giddy, dizzy lust, Steve gave the tiniest of nods -- little more than a twitch, but it was enough. Bruce hummed a smile, closed the gap between them, and tangled all Steve's excuses into a gentle, thorough kiss. Warm, deft fingers cradled his jaw, angled his face to slot their mouths together just so, held him close as Bruce's chin rasped against his own, lips pressing and snagging, tongues knotting against each other in the shivering press. Steve let go a pleading, helpless sound, hips rocking hopeful against Tony's weight.

"Oh fuck yeah," Tony said, his hands making a slick, obscene sound as he warmed something viscous between them, "Finally! No you don't," he chided, pressing oily hands to Steve's shoulders as nerves reared their head and Steve tried to pull away. "No more running, Cap. Just stay put, okay? Just stay where you're wanted."

"What?" Steve panted, shivering as Tony's strong hands spread and smoothed the cream across his back in long, firm strokes that were anything but clinical. His brain was whirling, Bruce's lips gusting soft, hot breaths across his ear. "What do you-" the words broke off, jagged in his throat as Bruce's tongue sought out the curl of his ear, and Tony leaned long and warm across his back to meet him there. And god, dear God, just that little, flirting heat, that sweet, heady double kiss to his damn _ear_ sent his blood singing, howling inside him, made him clench up hard and hold his breath, wishing to God he wasn't about to wake up, alone, mortified, and sticking to his sheets from just another wet dream.

"Everything you asked for," Tony was murmuring, nuzzling behind Steve's ear as he rocked, frotting gently down the crease of his ass. "Everything, you hear me? All of it, and more."

"I didn't," he gasped, clinging to that tiny shred of his pride as the rest unravelled around him. "Tony, I'd never ask-" Bruce's mouth silenced him, hard, pressing, digging, scraping the words off Steve's tongue until there was nothing but gasping whimpers left behind.

"You did ask," he whispered, shaking-fierce as their lips cracked apart. "The notebooks. The drawings..." He clutched a handful of Steve's hair, kissing him still, silent as the animal panic shocked through him. 

Tony's hands circled his chest from behind, clinging as if he expected to be bucked off, and for a trembling second, Steve considered it -- wrenching himself from between them, gathering up his tattered dignity around him and storming off to... somewhere. Alone. Again. 

"Tony's got no boundaries, you know that," Bruce murmured against his lips as the tension leaked away and left him shivering. Deft, blunt fingers wound up into Steve's hair, tilted his face until Bruce's forehead rested against his and the breath swirled, thick with want between them. "But we _had_ to see them to know. You've been asking -- _begging_ for months, only we never heard you. And Steve, I am so, _so_ sorry for that." 

He took a breath, forced his voice steady. "It's okay. I was fi-" the word broke into pieces as Tony's teeth closed on his ear.

"This is where you shut up and accept the apology," he said once he'd given a shake, and licked the small hurt afterward. His hand brushed from Steve's temple to Bruce's, somehow tilting them into a kiss again. "This is where you stop thinking of bullshit excuses, and give us what _we've_ wanted for months too, because we've cracked your damn cypher, and we are _not_ letting you go."

"Yes we will," Bruce barely lifted from the kiss to contradict. "If you really don't want this..." he paused to slot their mouths together again, all heat and hunger held barely in check. "If you really want to leave, then-"

"I don't," Steve said, face burning, eyes wet and hot. "God help me, I tried, but I don't want to leave."

"Then stay," Tony said, and gave his hips a digging roll that split the crease of Steve's ass around his erection, and drove it hot and weeping-slick against the sensitive flesh beneath. "Quit thinking of bullshit reasons not to, and just-" He jolted and yelped when Bruce landed an open-handed slap across his thigh, and the jerk of his hips making Steve catch his breath.

"We want you, Steve," Bruce said, stretching long against his side so that his own cock slid, firm and velvety into the warm crease between the curve of Steve's hip and the soft, warm sheets. "And if you want this too, then just let us in, okay?"

Head swimming, blood singing in his veins, Steve wasn't sure there was a single thing he could do but nod and surrender. "Please," he managed, rolling his ass upward and shuddering as the movement dragged his cock along the sheets, and Tony's cock along his entrance "Anything, just... please."

"Oh fuck, Cap," Tony growled, tumbling off Steve's back to press along his other side. His fingers, greasy and agile, slipped between Steve's cheeks, seeking. "Anything? You can't just _say_ things like that to me!"

"I think he means it, Tony," Bruce answered, leaning up as Steve groaned and spread his knees. He heard the moist tangle of their kiss over his head as Tony's finger breeched him in a smooth inward slide. A moment later, a second hand slipped between his thighs, searching out his balls with a gentle, comforting touch.

"I do," Steve buried the words, and the desperation behind them in the pillow, rocking up into the pair of them and begging silently and just this once, for everything he'd told himself he couldn't have. "Want you so much..." He gasped as Tony's knuckles pressed against him, and he rolled up greedily for more.

"God, tell me what you like," he heard Tony beg, shifting his hips to rub his cock wetly against Steve's side as he leaned down to scrape a line of hungry kisses along Steve's shoulder. "I know you said anything but... tell me how to make it good for you, Steve." He pulled back his finger, returned with two, and in the aching, hungry stretch between pain and pleasure, Steve found it was nearly more than he could do to hold back the urge to come.

"That," he whispered, clinging to control with all he had in him. Bruce's hand stroked, pulled, rolled his balls in his palm, and it was almost, very nearly too much. "God, just there," he gasped. "I can't. I'm so... I'm gonna-" 

"It's good, Steve," Bruce murmured, drawing Steve's hand out from under the pillow and guiding it to where Bruce's cock strained between them. "It's good," then he gasped as Steve palmed him, spreading the hot bead of precome along his length with a twisting pull. "Just let go. We've got you."

"Want more," Steve said, hating the whine in his voice. "I want-"

"I want you to come," Tony interrupted, pressing those perfect, awful fingers deeply in to stroke that spot that made Steve's brains shiver apart into white sparks. "Right on my fingers, just like this." Another inward sweep, thick, insistent, overwhelming. A sharp, wet skitter of teeth along his neck. Bruce pulsing precome, hot and slick in his fist, Tony growling, pleading, damp and heated against his skin. "Want to watch you come all over my bed, Steve -- watch it for real instead of just imagining."

And that was it. Steve was coming, groaning into the pillow as his balls turned out in pulsing pleasure, and his brain turned to mush inside his skull. All he could think, through the pounding tide of pleasure was, _please no, please God, no, not yet. It can't be over already. I wanted so much more..._

But it was a prayer to which he knew better than to expect an answer.


	13. Chapter 13

Tony felt it when Steve let go, felt his release in the smooth clasp of flesh rippling around his fingers, felt it in the powerful hips shuddering groans out of the splintered bedframe, felt it in the muscles that jolted and bucked against his chest, wrenching a broken wheeze out of Steve that seemed to go on for fucking _ever_. For a moment, caught up in the sound, the sensation, the _idea_ , it was almost all over for Tony too. 

Counting Pi wasn't going to work here – not while Captain goddamn _America_ was coming on Tony's fingers alone, coming just like Tony'd told him to, writhing and groaning into the pillow as he spilled and spilled and spilled, and fuck, how long could he _go_? Stifling a whimper, Tony filled his mouth with Steve's knotted shoulder and bit hard, focused on the skin-salt taste, thick with musk and want, the way the muscle bunched and twitched between his teeth, focused on the utter, epic _ass-kicking_ he would have to give himself if he blew his wad and embarrassed himself now.

"Hey," Bruce's voice, all gentleness and quiet concern that sliced neatly through Tony's fuck-haze. "Steve, hey -- it's all right. Look at me... come on..." Tony mastered himself, let loose of Steve's shoulder, and lifted his head to look, but it was obvious that Bruce's gentle tugging was not going to dig Steve out of hiding. His broad chest hitched, quick and ragged against Tony's side, each exhalation stained with a groan that might have been a word, or a sob, and only the pillow could possibly know. 

Bruce's eyes were wide when he glanced up, clearly as worried as Tony was that they'd managed to fuck this up already, but somehow he kept his voice calm and level. "Tony, give him a minute," he suggested, pulling a little away from their tangle. And fuck if that wasn't the very _last_ thing Tony wanted, but... well at very least, his fingers should probably be somewhere else if Steve was gonna have a meltdown.

"Sure," he sighed, and started to draw free. "No prob-"

"No!" Steve jolted up from the pillow like he'd been shocked, twisting to grab Tony's wrist before he could flinch back. "No, I don't need..." he swallowed a gulp, craning back to turn those hopelessly gorgeous eyes on Tony's face and fuck it all, those _were_ tears on his cheeks. "I don't want a minute," he pleaded. "Keep going. Please, keep going."

"Ease up, Cap," Tony managed a smile, and when a gentle tug failed to win his hand back, used Steve's grip on him to bring both their arms upward to his side. "You just came," he purred, sliding over Steve's back to press slow, soothing kisses up his spine, "And believe me, that was hot as fuck, but it's okay to take a breather before we do anything-"

Steve shook his head, gulped a huge breath that nearly lifted Tony off the bed, and slithered his hips to center Tony over his back again. "Don't need it. I'm ready. I want you. God, Tony, you don't know how long I've-"

"Hey," Bruce said again, leaning in close to smooth a hand over Steve's sweaty hair. "You don't have to rush Steve." He dimpled that sweet, not-quite-bashful smile that Tony had fallen in love with from the first, and pressed a kiss to Steve's temple. "We don't have anywhere else we need to be."

"Bruce," there was something broken in Steve's voice, like the name had to force its way past something thick and ragged in his throat, and hearing it, Tony wanted to do anything, _anything_ to make sure Steve never sounded like that again.

But Bruce only smiled, and hushed him with another soft kiss. "It's all right," he said. "Tony's wanted you forever too – since the first time you fought, the first words you said, he's wanted you." He chuckled and stroked a familiar hand along Tony's hip, trailed knowing fingers over the curve of his ass for a reassuring squeeze as he yanked the curtain away from Tony's embarrassing pay-no-attention-to-that-crush -- his very own exposed nerve. It was only fair after the notebooks, Tony supposed, but still nerve wracking as all hell to watch shock flash in the glance Steve cut his way, and have nothing to offer back to it but a hopefully charming smile.

"You've been in our bed so often in name already, but..." Bruce stole another kiss while Steve's lips were lax with stunned surprise, and any words that might have found their way out got thankfully tangled on his very, _very_ talented tongue. It was hot as fuck to watch, on more level than just the one, quiet, retiring, reticent Bruce being the one to coax out the Man with the Plan. 

"This is the first time you're really here," he mumbled as they slid apart enough for words. "The first time I can touch you... watch him touch you... see what you look like when he makes you come..." Steve shuddered and groaned as Bruce skated a covetous hand along his ribs. "And I'd really... really like to."

"God yes..." Steve sighed, and to Tony's delight, he caught Bruce by the shoulders, hauled him into another kiss, and then slowly, delicately, inexorably, dumped Tony off his back so he could haul Bruce onto his chest, kissing all the way. Somehow no one was squashed -- put that down to Steve's innate skill at _everything_ \-- and when they settled again with Steve holding Bruce astride his body, Tony knelt up to examine the options and found himself very pleased, and a little bit awed. 

"Shit, Cap," he groaned, slipping a hand up the length of his cock, "you're still _hard_. How are you still hard when you came like thirty seconds ago?" Steve made a desperate noise and rutted up into his grip, the slick of his come thick and hot and making the _filthiest_ noises between Tony's fingers. There was no goddamned way Tony wasn't going to have a taste of that bounty now that it was right there in his hands.

"Tony, God!" Steve yelped, his flinch of eager surprise knocked at the back of Tony's throat before he got himself under control. Tony'd have told him he didn't mind, only his mouth was full, and loving its work too much to bother with words. He followed Steve back down, pushed a little deeper, and swallowed hard to take in the rest. As passionate a cocksucker as Tony was, it was still a stretch, and he wasn't going to be able to hold it for long, damn his need to actually breathe, but the strangled, " _God!_ " that wrung out of Steve made it so very much worth it!

Bruce chuckled. "Don't give him ideas, Steve, you know he's vain enough already." Tony felt Bruce's thighs brush his head as he sat back to crane a look, arch and sly over his shoulder. "Though I will admit he is _very_ good with that mouth of his."

"I'll have you know," Tony pulled free to croak, "that I am _unbelievable_ with this mouth of mine," he grabbed a handful of Bruce's ass, rubbing a thumb square over the furl of his entrance and grinned, "As you _very_ well know."

"Felt pretty damn good to me," Steve volunteered weakly, the blown, stunned, _starving_ look in his blue eyes going straight to Tony's ego by way of his balls. Tony gave him another good, hard stroke and a slurp as payment -- a better attaboy reward than blueberries any day. "Having," Steve wheezed, rutting up again, "Oh fuck, Tony -- some trouble believing all this, so..."

"Believe it," Bruce grinned, pressing back against Tony's thumb with a grin and a shiver. "Tony's not even showing off yet."

"Well kinda, I was," Tony absolutely didn't whine. "I mean, have you _looked_ at this thing?"

Bruce blushed then -- actually, honest to fucking God blushed -- and cut a bashful glance at Steve as the tip of Tony's thumb, slick with spit, come, and the last traces of bruise cream, slipped inside him. "I was hoping for a more personal introduction," he admitted with a happy stretch against the intrusion. "Assuming you didn't want first go, Tony."

And really, how the fuck was _that_ even fair? Asking him to choose between getting to ride that gorgeous cock, or climbing up into the saddle, like Steve had been begging him -- _begging_ him to... Tony bit his lip hard, resting his forehead against the swell of Bruce's thigh but rationally weighing his options while Steve was fucking his fist and Bruce was writhing on his fingers turned out to be a little bit outside his range. "Help us out here, Steve," he managed after a long moment. "You're the tie breaker; how do you want this to go?"

For a long moment there was silence, but for panting breaths, and slick skin noises. Apparently Steve was having trouble deciding too – unless he was up there choking on a blush as he fought his way past his Catholic School manners. Tony grinned, imagining the mental struggle. Could a mouth as virginal and clean as that one actually ask for cock, even when he was desperate for it?

"Lick him open, Tony." The order, delivered in the hungrier, hornier bad brother of Steve's battlefield command voice, shot straight to Tony's balls and left him shocked, delighted, and panting again. "Put that 'unbelievable' mouth of yours to good use so I can fuck him while you're in me."

So that answered that.

"Jesus, Steve," this time, Tony absolutely did whine, and he knew it, and he didn't fucking care, because he was using all his give-a-damn just to keep himself from humping the sheets. "You can't just _say_ shit like that!"

"The hell I can't," Steve answered, all double-dog-dare and hell raiser grin as his hand slid over Bruce's back to join Tony's in spreading his ass cheeks wide, "I'm a Captain."

"Oh, that's so not sanitary..." Bruce moaned, clearly delighted as Tony, grateful for the distraction, licked him from taint to sacrum. Beneath them both, Steve groaned, setting his heels over the back of Tony's thighs and hefting him in tighter, chest snug against Steve's pelvis so that every twitch, every rock, every _breath_ frotted his cock against Tony's chest. Tony could hear, over the slurping, slick noises he was making, the strangled sounds of Bruce trying to lose his mind quietly, and under that, barely on the edge of hearing, Steve's voice murmuring gritty, hungry, filthy encouragements.

"-don't usually let him have you like this, do you?" Tony made out as he paused for breath. Bruce made a ragged, wet gulp of a reply, shaking his head so hard Tony could feel the force in his thighs. Steve's fingers soothed over his curls briefly, even as his other hand reached around the back of Tony's head and gently urged him back to it. "You like it too much, don't you? Being open, exposed; feeling everything and not being able to do anything but lie here under his tongue and let him give you everything he wants to..." Steve's fingers slid against Tony's scalp, stroking, massaging, his grip solid but not forceful – an anchor, a connection point, a pleading, possessive, proud gesture that was somehow more erotic than the feeling of his cock drooling precome all over Tony's scarred chest. "Does he make you come just like this, when you let him?"

Bruce's wordless, keening cry was answer enough for all of them. Tony groaned, driving tongue and fingers harder to their task in hopes that he wouldn't be the only one clinging to the edge once they were all joined at the hip. Steve swore, clenching his fingers in Tony's hair as his heels dug into Tony's ass again, rough and painful, and utterly fucking _perfect_ for the instant before they slipped away. Damn it.

"How close, Tony?" he heard Steve grit out as he drew his feet off Tony's thighs and planted them flat on the bed.

"Three," Tony pulled back enough to get the word out, before rubbing his spit-wet face along the trembling arch of Bruce's thigh, and giving a little more range to his stroke. "Just a little more-"

"Ready, I'm ready, God, I'm ready," Bruce mumbled, rocking back hard against his fingers.

"You sure?" Dubious, Tony took a measuring grip on Steve's cock, then another quick taste while he still could, because _damn_. "You're gonna feel this in the morning," he warned, even as he was casting about the rumpled bed for where he'd put the damned bruise cream down.

"Good!" Bruce growled, thrusting up out of Steve's arms to get his own knees underneath him, and oh, didn't Tony know _that_ voice well. "I can..." he grunted as Steve's cock rubbed hard up along his crack, and he got his first real feel of it. "Oh Jesus. I can take it."

And, of course, Tony knew from experience, he could – Bruce liked his pleasure with a hard edge to it, as if he was getting away with something, taking it that way and not letting the Hulk have any say in it. "Mmm," he hummed against Bruce's back, slipping his fingers out as he knelt up. "And like it, too. Hang on, everybody; latex time." 

Bruce swore through his teeth as Tony went hunting for condoms and lube, but Steve caught him by the shoulders, big hands soothing even as he steadied. "No blood, right?" Steve murmured, thighs trembling as Tony rolled the condom down over his cock. "But your spunk is okay?"

"I've had no problems with it so far," Tony leered, scooping out a good handful of cream and slathering it generously.

"Tony..." Bruce warned, rutting into a stretch as Tony worked the dollop of cream into him.

"Patience," he chided, seeking between Steve's cheeks with his other hand and finding him still relaxed, open and easy around his fingers. "This is delicate work. All the pieces need to be lined up just so..." 

"Stark..." Steve this time, sounding horny, high, and slightly pissed. His heels dug at Tony's back, both warning and plea.

"Shh, almost there," Tony grinned, setting himself in place and pushing inward just enough to be sure he'd stay seated. Steve sucked breath in between his teeth, his body twitching and flexing around the intrusion so that Tony had to bite his lip hard just to be able to focus on guiding Bruce down into place. 

The stretch of it was a gorgeous, wire-fine tremor lancing up the long line of Bruce's back as he sank slowly, by breathless, halting inches. Tony could read the grudging yield of his body in the bulging veins and frantic, thwarted twitch of Steve's cock against his grip as it slowly, inexorably disappeared. Almost without thinking, Tony followed the inward slide, sinking into such a clasp of heat and strength, he could barely breathe, could barely _think_ around the sensation as he pressed flesh to flesh at last, and felt Bruce's familiar weight settle back against his chest.

Someone keened, high and thin in his throat; someone whimpered a half-voiced plea; someone cursed like it was being wrung from the deepest-hidden part of him. And then they were moving, all of them together; a tidal, rhythmic surge, all hip and spine and straining thighs, tectonic force in three directions between them. Far as Tony could tell, they were _all_ just hanging on for the ride until... oh yeah. That was the way of it right _there,_ the long glide, the echoes of impact like chain-fire as first Tony, then Steve, then Steve's grip bottomed out, and then lead the long retreat. It was breathless, aching, and so, so, _so_ good, and Tony should have _known_ Cap would make it perfect, even if he could never have imagined it. That empty space, the one they hadn't noticed was there, was occupied now; filled up just right, all the pieces in place, cogs meshed, flywheels humming with possibilities.

Tony could feel himself riding the whitecap-curl of orgasm, feel the pressure of it coiling in his balls, shivering threats down to his toes as they sped, in tiny, stealthy increments, from an easy roll, to a driving pace of creaking wood and slicking sweat and hungry, animal noises. His hands were slipping on Bruce's hips, his knees were chaffing, aching under the relentless press and curl of Steve's hips, his breath was coming in ragged gasps, all fire and pleasure, and furious, desperate _will_ to hold it all back, to somehow make this, make _them_ keep on like this forever.

But then he felt Steve's fingers pry his up from the sweaty curve of Bruce's hip, and lace their hands tight together -- and fuck, wasn't that just like him? Blinking sweat from stinging eyes, Tony grinned to see that Steve had captured one of Bruce's hands just the same way, fingers knotted tight, as if being balls-deep in him wasn't intimate enough... but somehow the sheer _sweetness_ of the gesture got right under Tony's every jaded, sarcastic impulse, and burned a path straight down to his balls.

Flushed, fevered and gorgeous, Steve locked Tony's gaze, his eyes showing just a glint of blue around deep and desperate wells of black so heavy Tony wasn't sure he'd ever escape, even if he wanted to. Wordless, Steve pulled Bruce's fingers, knotted to his own, up to his lips, pressed one silent, half-hidden word there... Then they both held on tight as, with a sudden, silent jolt, and a fierce arching wriggle, Bruce came apart between them.

Tony clung for all he was worth, but a second later, Steve yelled, heaved upward, and his body began to pulse and clamp around Tony's cock. _Not_ coming was such a distant impossibility that Tony couldn't even consider it as the roar of orgasm swamped every single thought right out of his brain.

~*~

They slept, the both of them, as the last of the day faded -- deep and soft and content, and Steve held them while they did; each curled toward the other across the span of Steve's chest, their fingers not quite entangled on his belly, their chins prickling the hollow of each shoulder as they breathed, hot and damp across his neck. He held them both, gently as moths in loose-cupped hands, but still tightly enough to feel the flex and ease of both sets of ribs. He held on, unmoving while the sweat first chilled, then dried, taut and brittle over his skin, thinking, as hard as he dared. Wondering silently, while there was a chance he wouldn't be outguessed by these two wildfires, just what it was he'd gotten himself into.

It was not at all what he'd thought he wanted all those months after Pepper had left for California, when Steve had faced up to his feelings for Tony, and realized with sick certainty that he'd missed his chance. He'd realized that he was seeing Tony blooming with love, happy every day, hardly ever drunk, or shadowed over with that horrid, manic exhaustion that had made him so brittle and sharp when they'd first met, first fought, first drawn blood on each other. He was falling for Tony _because_ Tony was falling for someone else, and it had been a bittersweet shock when Steve had realized that he'd wanted -- needed -- for Tony to have that happiness far more than he needed to be the one to give it to him.

Stepping back had been almost reflex then -- born of a hundred excruciating double dates with friends of Bucky's girls, who really wanted to be Bucky's girls themselves. That often wound up with three together back in those days, leaving Steve displaced, wandering the city till early hours just so he wouldn't have to hear them through the wall. Some battles you could only win by not fighting, even when everything inside you was begging for you to take a swing.

And if he had to lose out to someone, well, Bruce Banner was a hell of a lot easier to take than some new-minted soda-fountain blonde who didn't know anything about Tony except what she read in the tabloids, and wouldn't remember anything important about him a month after she left. 

Bruce was kind, generous, caring, Tony's equal in mind and manner, and good God, but a blind man could see how he loved Stark, from his artfully tousled hair down to his bespoke tennis shoes. It had never for a moment occurred to Steve that Bruce might possibly want anything less than absolutely all of Tony, let alone that he might want any such claim on Steve. And yet the passion in that first kiss he'd offered hadn't been compromise or kindness, comfort or obligation -- Steve knew all too well what all of those tasted like, and he'd hated them each by turn -- it had been hunger, pure and simple, and it had rocked Steve down to his soles.

But that didn't make it any easier for Steve to understand. He was still pondering that when Tony began to drool and snort against his neck, and when Bruce began to mumble in his sleep, and he suddenly realized that the weight of them had driven both his arms entirely numb. When Bruce turned over into a sprawl across the empty expanse of the bed, Steve breathed a quiet sigh of relief, and began to carefully disentangle himself from Tony.

It was slow going, but Steve had years of experience slipping unnoticed out of a shared bed when he needed a little privacy, and Bucky had been a much lighter sleeper than it seemed either Bruce or Tony were. Steve made it to the shower without waking either in a little over five minutes. Two minutes later, he was clean, warm, shaved, and a little stuck for what the heck to do next.  
The bathroom had a laundry chute instead of a clothes hamper, and despite Tony's usual tendency to fling and drop rather than put away, Steve had seen no sign of his suit or undersuit in the main room. 

"Jarvis?" he murmured hopefully, once he'd discovered that even his gauntlets, boots, and shield were gone.

"How may I assist you, Captain?" the AI answered in the same quiet tone.

"I need to borrow a pair of pants. I don't suppose Tony's got any nearby that would fit me?"

The hesitation that followed was telling, but Steve refused to withdraw the question, and after a moment, Jarvis said, "Given the differences in your heights and inseams, I doubt you would find any of Sir's trousers comfortable. Perhaps something from Doctor Banner's encounter wardrobe might do?" And there was no disguising the chill judgment in that answer, but Steve wasn't about to go wandering around the tower in his alltogether.

"Fine," Steve answered, turning to the door. "Are they in the closet, or the bureau?" But when he opened the door to slip out, he found himself facing Tony, unashamedly naked and unmistakably annoyed.

"Where the hell d'you think you're going?" he challenged, bracing his arms over his chest, just in case Steve had any delusions that he could be convinced to step aside.

Only the thought of Bruce, probably still dozing across the room, kept Steve from rising to the tone. He took a deep breath, blew it out again soft. "Well, I thought I'd go back to my own apartment," he began.

"Oh, is that what you thought?" Tony was _not_ quiet in cutting him off, and got even louder at Steve's quelling hiss. "No, I will not shh! Why the hell would you think a stupid thing like that?"

"Well," Steve bit out, "it's just that I don't want to-"

"Steve," Bruce called, sitting up out of the nest of rumpled sheets and pillows, "If the next word out of your mouth is going to be 'intrude', I urge you to _seriously_ reconsider it."

"No," Steve yelped, pushing past Tony to wave a hand at the bed – really more like a pile of bedding on the floor. "No, it's just that I really don't think I can-"

"What, Play nice and share with others?" Tony challenged again from behind him, giving Steve a shove toward the tumbled mess. "Seriously, Rogers? You just conducted a fucking symphony on your back, big finish and everything!" Another shove, and Steve went with it, but stopped short when his shins hit the cracked edge of the bed frame. "Don't tell me you're scared of the green-eyed monster," Tony growled, all eyebrow and double dog dare when Steve turned to fend off another nudge.

"What?" Steve cried, stung. "No! I'm not jealous..." but his conscience wouldn't let him quite get away with that outright lie. "Well I mean not _now_ , I'm not. And believe me, I'm used to sharing anything good that shows up in my life, but," he gestured at the bed-ruin again. "This isn't where-" He stopped as Bruce caught his hand, gripped his fingers tight.

"This _is_ right where you should be, Steve," he said, earnest and solemn. "Right here with Tony, and with me; right where you're wanted. Haven't you done enough running from this?"

Steve sighed, turned his hand to meet the clasp palm to palm. "Too much," he admitted. "But-"

"Don't you realize how good this could be? How easily it could disappear if you don't reach out and take hold now, while you can?" And Steve could hear the sad, distant ghosts of many, many lost chances in those words, Bruce's regrets numbering no fewer than his own.

"Well of course I do, but-"

"No buts!" Tony put in, reaching around Steve to capture his other hand in an unforgiving clench. "Absolutely no buts allowed here, Rogers. And no bullshit poverty-kid-orphan-martyr excuses either; you look me in the eye and give me ONE decent reason why here – right here with us -- wouldn't be _exactly_ the right place for you?"

Geez, Tony always did know just the tone that would get right under Steve's skin, didn't he? "Just one reason?" Steve challenged back, letting go of neither hand.

"Just one."

"And then you'll let me go?"

Bruce stirred. "Steve, we understand what 'no' means-"

"As long as it's not a bullshit reason," Tony cut him off with a quick glance, and a stubborn boost of his chin.

Steve considered. "How about I give you three extremely valid reasons why I need to go?" He didn't bother to keep the dare off his face, knowing it wasn't exactly fair, setting Tony up like that, but past the point of talking himself out of it.

Tony chewed on his lip for a minute, clearly sensing he'd lost control of the conversation, but Steve could see he also wasn't about to go back on his offer. "Shit," he muttered after a long and searching stare. Then he released Steve's hand and braced his own on his hips. "All right, three good reasons: Go."

"One," Steve held up a finger, "my apartment's where my _clothes_ are." He gave a pointed glance around the room and smirked. " _All_ of them, apparently."

"We can send for your stuff-" Tony began.

Steve cut him off. "Two, you both stink." Tony made a harrumphing noise, and Bruce an acknowledging grimace, but Steve rolled on before either could speak. "You need to shower and get cleaned up, and I'm not going to hang around your room waiting while you do."

"So come with us," Tony leered. "Again. What?" he yelped when Bruce swatted him on the thigh, "That shower's big enough for six, and no, that's not subjective data, it's proven, ask no further. Point is, recreational showers are just a bonus feature to-"

"Three," Steve said over him, adding another finger. "I am not going to hang around waiting while you get cleaned up, because I haven't eaten anything in about twenty hours-"

"Thirty hours, Captain," Jarvis corrected.

"Thirty hours, and I'm about hungry enough to chew on the plaster!"

"So we call for delivery!" Tony groused, flinging his arms up wide. "Seriously, Steve, I thought we agreed no bullshit reasons here!"

With a glare, Steve added a fourth finger. "I'm not getting back into that bed."

"But-"

" _That_ bed, Tony," Steve said, giving it a kick that lurched the whole pile into a wobbling tilt and a short, sharp drop. Bruce yelped when Steve used their handclasp to haul him up out of the mess. "That bed needs to be taken out and shot! I've had a goddamned spring digging into my kidney for the last half an hour, and I'm _done_!"

"He's got a point there," Bruce laughed, leaning into Steve's body to clamber free. "I'm pretty sure I've got splinters in some very awkward places right now."

"So I'll get a better one!" Tony groused. It was a weak protest, barely able to struggle out from under the chuckle. 

"Not tonight, you won't." Steve shook his head and grabbed Tony's shoulder to tow him along with Bruce toward the shower. "Go. Wash. I'll wrangle us all something to eat, and you can join me in my apartment when you don't smell like sex, gasoline, and powdered concrete anymore." 

"And then we get to stress test _your_ bed?" Tony hung on the doorframe, all big dewy eyes and filthy, leering smile, and Steve had to laugh, even as he stole the scarlet robe from the back of the door.

"I think we have some things to discuss first," Bruce put in, meeting Tony's pout without giving an inch. "I'm sure Steve has questions and concerns, and I know I do. This isn't going to work if it's nothing but... really great sex."

"Fucking _epic_ sex," Tony protested.

"Bruce is right," Steve put in. "We need more plan than attack here if this is going to hold up under pressure."

"I know," Tony said, all trace of humor abruptly gone from his eyes. "Believe me, I know that we're all baggage and explosive chemistry, and it'll be a fucking miracle if nobody ends up getting an eye put out, but..." he rubbed the back of his head, where sleep and sex had twisted his hair into a heck of a rooster-tail. "Look, the way I figure it, we've got an engineer who pulls off the impossible with startling regularity," he tapped his own chest. "An indestructible genius who is _over_ the petty he-said-she-said-no-I-couldn't-possibly bullshit," he pointed to Bruce. "And the star spangled man with not only the plan, but illustrated diagrams to boot." At last, he pointed at Steve, only a tiny flicker of wariness in his glance as he brought up the drawings that Steve hadn't ever meant for them to see. There would be an accounting over that soon, and they both knew it. Soon. But not tonight.

"Now that we've got Steve actually IN the picture with us," Tony said over his shoulder as Bruce climbed under the spray, "I'm pretty damned sure we can figure out how to make all the pieces fit. Right?" The last was aimed at Steve with somber but hopeful eyes, as if to make it plain that even now, if he chose it, Steve could just walk away.

As if he'd ever want to, now he'd tripped and fallen headlong into exactly what he'd wanted all along. Still, it didn't do to give Tony too much latitude, so Steve kept the upwelling fondness off his face and restricted himself to a single, crisp nod. "Right," he said. "Come down when you're ready. I'll have spaghetti ready, and we can talk."

"And then sex after?" There went the eager puppy face, right on cue. 

Steve patted him on the head, and said, "That's the plan."

Tony beamed. "I like this plan. I'm happy to be on board with this pla –" 

Grinning, Steve shut the door on the rest, but between him and Jarvis and the empty hallway, Steve paused and allowed, "I am too."

**Author's Note:**

> The sex in question is consent-dubious because of the presence of drugs in the Hulk's system. On Steve's part, the consent is present, if not precisely enthusiastic. Still, if this would present a problem for you, please feel free to skip this whole thing.


End file.
